Time Warner Considering Demerging with AOL

Gracenotes writes "According to the Daily Telegraph, America Online CEO Jonathan Miller notes that AOL might be successful enough to break away from Time Warner and still remain in business. According to Miller, AOL is providing many online services, which provide competition against Google, Yahoo, and other rivals. Since its merger with Time Warner and plummet in value, such features have been increasingly emphasized."

Comments

Hooray for AOL...

[Farmer Tim]

AOL might be successful enough to break away from Time Warner and still remain in business

Can anyone actually think of a reason this is good news?

Re:In some ways a victim of its own success

[linuxci]

In the UK I suspect a lot of run of the mill ISPs will die out with Sky (news corps UK satellite service) and mobile phone companies like Orange offering free broadband to their customers. I'm not sure why ntl:Telewest our biggest cable company has still not offered the service free yet but I'm sure they will so they don't lose out to Sky.

But with most people getting broadband for free once these rollouts complete the only market for a subscription ISP will be for those that need something the free ISPs don't offer (static IP's, usenet, etc), that's not an AOL niche.

Re:AOL can make it, we aren't their target audienc

[Lord Kano]

Yes it's an Internet provider, but it's also a content provider, a portal provider, and many other things.

AOL as a content provider is a sure loser. If you were trying to get to the largest possible audience with your product (TV show, music, etc...) would you go with a provider that has such a miniscule user base and lock out the rest?

LK