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Time Warner Confirms Split With AOL
ausekilis writes "Many outlets are reporting that Time Warner has confirmed plans to spin off AOL. All that's left to deal with are a few financial hurdles, such as buying out Google's 5% stake in AOL. The interesting part of the story is that both AOL's CEO and Time Warner's CEO said effectively the same thing, that AOL will be better off as an independent unit, as opposed to 'a cog in the Time Warner wheel.' Interesting to note that when they originally merged, the idea was for AOL to be a one-stop shop for all your internet goods. Makes you wonder what would have happened if Time Warner had invested in AOL as an exclusive media outlet for movies, TV, music, etc. Perhaps AOL would have regained some speed and become the prominent household name it once was, instead of being that company who sent us all the free coasters."
Do we really need those all-inclusive portals anymore ? Time Warner might be thinking along those lines..
> Perhaps AOL would have regained some speed and become the prominent household name it
> once was, instead of being that company who sent us all the free coasters.
Was it ever anything else? (I didn't actually get very many, though.)
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
I agree with those at America Online that think that as of now, it's best suited for a vertical move to social networking. It's internet connectivity model has been stagnant for a long time, but it's social networking features are strong and have room to improve. (AIM is the quintessential example of this.)
However, I feel bad for those that still work at the company, and users still chained to their internet services for some reason or other.
...AOL as an exclusive media outlet for movies...
Over dial-up, I think it would have been cheaper to GO to Hollywood (plus it might be finished downloading when you return)!
*this space intentionally left blank
"One of the four pointers saying 'come and see', and I saw, and beheld a white
Why does Google have a 5% stake in AOL?
About the only thing that AOL really has that are of any worth are AIM and a few blogs such as Engdaget. Other then that they have ruined their reputation too much to be profitable in any other thing.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
Plenty can be said about the cons of AOL such as the software being classified as a virus. There was a time period from 1996-2003 when AOL chat rooms had hundreds of thousands of participants 24 hours a day. For us introverts it was a social mecca.
... and so is a bankruptcy filling. To save effort and energy, they might as well do both at the same time.
(Disclosure: I saw this post on a different blog, and I'm blatantly stealing it.. ah, now my conscience feels better)
If you can read this... 01110101 01110010 00100000 01100001 00100000 01100111 01100101 01100101 01101011
In my day they sent out floppy disks. You know, the kind that could be erased and something useful put on them. It was great!
"Do we really need those all-inclusive portals anymore?"
There was never a need for all-inclusive portals after the arrival of the internet. AOL was trying to keep less-knowledgeable people inside its own sites, and away from the internet, so it could make more money from its ads. For years, and I suppose even now, an AOL email address meant that the owner of the address didn't have any technically knowledgeable friends.
The 88 BILLION dollars lost when Time Warner bought AOL has been considered to be the worst business decision of all time. Maybe the French selling the Louisiana Purchase to the U.S. government was a worse decision. But, if we include decisions made by government, then even the U.S. invading Iraq lost more money.
At the time, even people with little technical knowledge knew that AOL was not a good company to buy.
Time Warner's CEO, Gerald M. Levin, who made the decision, called himself an "imperial CEO". He made huge amounts of money, and didn't seem to care that he caused enormous troubles for his company, and for all its employees that owned stock.
Just before the merger, Ted Turner called the merger "better than sex". The problem continues, of course. People with no technical knowledge assume that, if they don't know something, there is nothing to know. Technically knowledgeable people get amazingly little respect.
was mostly to people who couldn't figure out how to set up their Dialup account for Internet Access. One AOL install CD and they were on the Internet. Plus they had access to the Time/Warner media empire via the AOL search engine.
But now most operating systems have Wizards to guide ISP setup just as easy as the AOL Install CD and most Broadband ISPS have install CDs to set up DSL/Cable Modems and Routers. Plus the media is all over the Internet and not just in an AOL search database. So really what need is there for AOL anymore?
The only advantage for AOL is for those people who cannot get broadband but need a local call-in number that most other ISP's don't offer. I remember bringing my laptop to Branson, Missouri and my NetZero Free Internet dial-up account on my laptop could not get a local Branson number (From Branson for some reason calling Springfield and Joplin numbers where toll access at the Time Sharing Condos and are considered long distance and hence charged more on the bill even if they are in the same area code), but the people at the Time Sharing Condo said that AOL had several local numbers that work with their AOL software.
But now with USB G3 based modems you can get an Internet connection almost anywhere for $40/month or lower. Plus many places offer free Wifi. So there isn't much need for dial-up access local numbers anymore. Cricket has a pay as you go plan, so you can pay for G3 access before you go on vacation and have a whole month to use it.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
I thought it was stupid when Time Warner did it. Now it looks like they are going to take a real beating.
Yes, from the beginning, the Time Warner+AOL deal was a "Match made in heaven" - if only by "heaven", you mean some board room full of people who know nothing about the internet, or people using it, other than what they've read in the "Wall Street Journal.".
Now wait, before you click that "troll" popup, let me explain:
When the deal went together, the "rationale", was that the joint venture would allow "Time Warner", with all it's "media content" (i.e. old Bugs Bunny cartoons) to leverage "AOL" for it's "distribution" method (i.e. crappy dial-up Internet for technologically ignorant users) into a powerhouse.
While you could offer little debate for why this doesn't look good on paper, in the real-world, it just made no sense. Content distributors can go after video, TV, movies, and the entire Internet as a whole, and AOL needs to carry (and deliver) content from all the providers.
This is the same rationale that made NBC think that the needed to partner with Microsoft to start a news web site.
You could argue that my points are wrong or right - but in the end, I knew this was happen, so I'm happy to say
"I told you so!!"
On second though, go ahead - hit the "Troll" button!
You've got FAIL.
there is no Wikipedia article on "first post". Link fail.
"Perhaps AOL would have regained some speed and become the prominent household name it once was, instead of being that company who sent us all the free coasters."
They were ever anything else?
I always saw AOL as the online service for people who didn't want to type. Was there ever a time AOL had, like, actual street cred?
Wow, a GNAA troll.
It's been like a million years since I last saw one on Slashdot. I thought Netcraft confirmed GNAA is dead?
It was AOL who bought Time-Warner: http://news.cnet.com/2100-1023-235400.html
www.gaiageek.com
Perhaps now, without Time Warner, AOL might be able to move forward and actually attract people, instead of attempting to trap them.
What could AOL possibly do to move forward? At best, they could improve customer service, stop requiring their proprietary dial-up software, and lower their price to a reasonable rate. But then, they would just be another dial-up company in a world that is saturated with dial-up companies, and dial-up customer base is shrinking. And it will be years before the taint of the AOL name wears off, it will probably take more time than phones will last.
Isn't that _backwards_? I mean, I know AOL is a laughingstock now, but they paid $164 billion to purchase Time-Warner in 2001. AOL bought Time-Warner, not the other way around. Doesn't the owner spin off the subsidiary?
It was a brilliant move by them at the time to turn Internet bubble money into real money.
rage, rage against the dying of the light
Ummm,
It was BushCo that "bailed out" the banks by giving their buddies lots of taxpayer money.
Rethuglican tool.
And it was BushCo that failed to properly regulate businesses that led to most of the problems in the first place.
Libertarian fool.
You joking right? You know they have a little advertising wing right? Platform-A, advertising.com? Ring any bells?
Quack, quack.
MOD PARENT UP. That's my understanding, also.
"The huge payoffs for those immediately involved in the deal were by far the most important driving force." That does not, however, explain Ted Turner saying that the merger was "better than sex". That must have been sheer ignorance; he lost billions.
I gotta say that AOL was destined to fail for the same reason GM and Enron and sub prime lenders crashed: Its a RAW DEAL. I was a VERY EARLY adopter of AOL. Back in the day of floppy mailers (way before CD) I was already on a local BBS (Nitelog now Redshift.com) with my brand new 486 with math co processor, Windows 3.0 and an new super blinding fast 14.4 modem (maybe lower) and I thought it was go cool to be able to leave the dos 5 command line, and be in GUI land. But honestly, my enthusiasm for AOL decayed into resentment. Soon these jerks were like the phone company, the bad checking account, or fine print on the policy or credit. Like every other corporate pig in America, it became a finely tuned rip off and maze of obfuscation. There billing practices were ridiculous: you could open accounts all day without any obstacle, but to close an account and get them off of your checking account you had to wait on hold for hours, and then do it again month after month. But worse than that, AOL treated the internet like there own property, and they had many Americans fooled into thinking that the service and experience was entirely proprietary. People who were unsophisticated or inexperienced would pay their rip off $23.95/month (or $2/hour for some suckers) because they were misled into thinking that was their only way to keep email and access to websites. For YEARS they persisted to ever charge, over bill, refuse to cancel service in a timely fashion. There were literally THOUSANDS of "WHY AOL SUCKS" websites popping up everywhere. I really resented the wool that they pooled over many peoples eyes...but how long did they think they could get away with it ? Did they actually expect customers to stay when suddenly Net Zero and a bunch of other dial ups were FREE by the mid 90's? Steve Case cashed in and sold out. He was no Ted Turner. But Corporate American Media had an appetite to EXPLOIT the customer and so that merger was a marriage mad in hell. Severs them right for screwing everyone over, they get screwed too. Its another Web Van, in the end. Only Web Van was good to their customers...the 10 of us. Look at the corporate landscape now: only monopolies retain their customers...but not forever. I dumped Sprint Cellular, Microsoft, Comcast, and B of A, and Visa, AT&T, GM, GE, and Exxon for the same reason: I'm tired of the fine print, the add on fees, and the policy to always punish regular customers for being dumb enough to stay. Good rates are reserved for strangers or stolen business, but if you're a regular then MAKE THEM PAY. Well, these jerks got rich for a while, but I'll avoid ever doing business with them. When did American Business ethics degrade to the point where screwing the customer is the long range strategy and any value offered is a tactic like bait on a hook. Are we all numb in the head? Don't do business with parasites. Just because we have a debt economy doesn't mean we have to take that crap from them ever. Grow up shareholders: if we don't get value, then neither will you. Its simple, its the Golden Rule. AOL, A-hole-hell, good riddance.
The problem with the notion of Time Warner making AOL an exclusive media outlet is that Time Warner isn't the monolithic corporation many like to think it is. This is less true today than it was back when the merger (which was really, as others have mentioned, AOL buying Time Warner, even though it was spun to the media as a merger) took place, but it still operates in a somewhat looser fashion than many corporate behemoths. Time Inc. was always fairly decentralized, with different divisions setting their own policies and procedures. The Time Inc. & Warner Communications merger that created TW made it moreso. The idea that the corporate powers on high would just hand down orders to the music, publishing, magazine and movie divisions about where they would distribute their product or whom would be their "outlet" is pretty ridiculous if you knew anything about how Time Warner operated, about the wide-ranging, across-the-board autonomy most divisions had even while being wholly owned by Time Warner.
Then there was the problem of Road Runner, which no one ever solved. Road Runner (now, I believe, Time Warner Cable) -- rightly, in my view -- saw AOL as competition, not as a potential partner. Road Runner was profitable and growing. Even the most fervent AOL champions within Time Warner didn't want to piss off Road Runner, nor be seen as responsible for killing the golden goose (or, at least, for slowing its production of eggs). Road Runner had done just fine striking its own deals with Time Warner properties (like HBO) and non-TW properties alike. The truth is, Time Warner could have done everything it hoped to do with AOL on its own -- it already had the necessary ingredients under the corporate umbrella -- and it could've done it without ruffling the feathers that the AOL deal ruffled or introducing yet another foreign corporate culture into a mix that was already a wildly divergent mix of sometimes clashing cultures. The mystifying thing, to me, about the whole fiasco is why Time Warner ever thought it needed AOL.
"No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality;..."
A totally squandered opportunity. Just when broadband is becoming relatively cheap and ubiquitous and we are moving into the era of rich online content, pay-for-view media, online gaming etc. Where is the AOL version of the iPlayer. Where are the AOL set-top boxes, with the pay for view content. They had the content, they had the network infrastructure, and what did they do with it, nothing !
AOL is a subsidiary of Time Warner, formerly known as AOL Time Warner, which also has subsidiaries such as Time Inc., Warner Bros Entertainment, etc. To learn more about the history of commerce, go to your nearest Internet.
That was exaclty my thoughts: If AOL could make it through all the shit of the past 10 years, especially the horrible merger/de-merger, AOL ain't going no where. AOL has doth proven itself as a stable company being still in existence despite some of the worst things to happen to an ISP/internet_content_provider. In short, if AOL's made it this far it ain't gonna die. AOL just needs to find something novel to deliver and bring people back. I still use my AOL email accounts from the early 90's. I don't even have to mention still using AIM, as it's the most widely used Instant Messenger (hell, everyone I meet has an AIM screen name). Now that AOL is free from the Time-Warner-cog, let's see it be an internet presence again (instead of just a platform to push TimeWarner crap).
It would also be possible to question the sanity of all the people who worked at Time Warner and let him do that.
AOL's merger with Time Warner and wanting to increase their bottom line by selling or closing all of Time Warner's businesses that did not have large profit margins is the reason WCW was killed off and sold in 2001. (I'm sure there aren't many wrestling fans among Slashdotters, but liken it to EA swallowing up and closing or otherwise ruining game studios that you liked.) I feel bad for whichever company ends up being unfortunate enough to buy AOL, the business is likely not salvageable, and there is certainly no value left in the name.
Yes, after restructuring. They are trying hard to hide the the fact that AOL bought Time Warner.
Time-Warner: "Let's buy the most-hated brand in the online community, whose users are renowned and mocked for their ignorance, and make a profit!"
Internet: "AOLers??? You want to make MORE AOLers? DIE!"
AOL needs to sleep for about 20 years until absolutely no one can remember how bad it was. They put the most ugly and shameful parts of the American commercial excess culture online, then DUMBED IT DOWN so Americans could pretend they were on the Internet with the grownups. Ye gods and demons.