Is AOL Finally Crashing and Burning?

An anonymous reader writes "AOL's disastrous quarterly report showed cash from continuing operations was down 44% from a year ago (adjusted operating income was down 37%), as it continues a rocky transition from monthly subscription fees to advertising. (Their quarterly report also notes 'the cessation of large-scale access subscriber acquisition campaigns' — investor-speak for the fact that AOL will finally stop mass mailings of free trial accounts.) Unfortunately, AOL's advertising business 'did even worse. Its revenues declined by $110 million... every single segment is down.' AOL has already lost 86% of the 30 million subscribers it reported in 2001 — down to just 4.3 million — but advertising hasn't yet filled the gap (possibly because many AOL ads had been displayed to the users AOL no longer has). But at least, as one technology blogger notes, AOL has finally released a mobile application, 'in the new definition of "late to the party."'"

Comments

They still mail CDs ??

[assertation]

They still mail CDs?? Wow, I haven't gotten one in the mail since 2000. Hopefully they will get some new management, either people or new ideas, in time to save the business.

Re:They still mail CDs ??

[Anonymous Coward]

Hopefully they will get some new management, either people or new ideas, in time to save the business.

Why? did you grow attached to them emotionally? did anyone?

Re:They still mail CDs ??

[amiga3D]

I used them as coasters. New ones came regularly in the mail. I always thought that AOL stood for American Organization of Lamers.

Re:They still mail CDs ??

[arb phd slp]

The CDs often came in very nice cases. I painted some and used them whenever I wanted to hide a burned CD in a geocache.

Re:They still mail CDs ??

[MBGMorden]

The CD's? No, I pretty much hated them. The floppies though? Now those were cool. AOL ensured that no one ever had to actually buy their own disks.

Re:They still mail CDs ??

[Anne_Nonymous]

>> I used them as coasters.

Yeah, they fit perfectly in the cupholder on my machine.

Re:They still mail CDs ??

[ColdWetDog]

Yeah, they fit perfectly in the cupholder on my machine.

I'm not sure this is the time or place to break it to you - but that's no cupholder.

Kids these days. Don't know anything.

Re:They still mail CDs ??

[DarkTempes]

I thank you, kind sir, for much laughter.

Re:They still mail CDs ??

[PopeRatzo]

They still mail CDs??

Honestly, until I saw this story I truly did not know that AOL was still in business. I had assumed they closed up shop sometime about 2004 or 2005.

What do they do now? Are they still selling dial-up service?

Re:They still mail CDs ??

[Anonymous Coward]

Indeed. I still have so many "AOL" boot disks in my Flip 'n File. :)

Re:They still mail CDs ??

[commodore64_love]

>>>Are they still selling dial-up service?

I still use AOL Dialup service (except it's called Netscape ISP). I've been with AOL almost nonstop since 1988, when they were called Quantum Link (a kind of primitive web for graphics-based Commodore 64s).

$7/month is hard to beat, and I can access it anywhere there's a phone line (like in hotels).

Re:They still mail CDs ??

[petermgreen]

Afaict (based on what i've picked up on /., I don't use them myself and they were never anywhere near as popular on this side of the pond as in america) they do a few things

1: I think* they have a "transit data network" which is one of the tier 1 ISPs (the group of ISPs that all peer with each other and form the top level of the internet)
2: They still sell dialup and in the some places (including the UK where I live) they also offer broadband.
3: They sell a product which lets you access all the AOL services over your internet connection which some people who used to use AOL dialup and now have broadband use.
4: They have some advert supported products as well (IIRC they actually have an ad-supported product that is very similar to the aforementioned pay product but they don't like to mention that to thier customers).

* The transit data networks website still claims time warner is AOLs parent company so I can't tell which side of the split that went with.

Re:They still mail CDs ??

[Peach Rings]

$7/month is hard to beat, and I can access it anywhere there's a phone line (like in hotels).

You can access a WWAN anywhere there are human beings residing, and per gigabit it's a lot cheaper than dialup.

Re:They still mail CDs ??

[Peach Rings]

America Online operates in Europe?

Re:They still mail CDs ??

[petermgreen]

It seems my previous post was wrong, they sold the UK ISP to talktalk (talktalk has been buying up lots of ISPs to try and increase thier LLU coverage).

Re:They still mail CDs ??

[asdf7890]

America Online operates in Europe?

Yep. Though they've only ever been officially known as AOL in their branding over here. They were famous for their badly implemented parental controls when their dial-up services appeared in the UK using said parental controls as a key selling point - their systems would not let you sign up if you were from Scunthorpe, for instance.

Re:They still mail CDs ??

[WhitetailKitten]

I give you AOL India: http://www.aol.in/ I don't think they're an ISP, there, but... seriously.

Re:They still mail CDs ??

[yoyhed]

You're right about the wireless anywhere human beings reside - it's not hard to find internet on the go, even assuming you don't have it through your smartphone already.

$7/month is also easy to beat if you value your time at all. What's a minimal DSL subscription these days, $20? At 1.5Mb/s, this is still approximately 37 times faster than dial-up.

Doesn't AOL require you to install their bloatware to connect as well? Gross! :P

Re:They still mail CDs ??

[commodore64_love]

Interesting. How much coverage is WWAN? (i.e. Can I get it in Wendover Utah?)

In the last hotel I stayed, I did search for a wireless connection, but found nothing. I asked the clerk and she said if I move one room to the left I can use their service for ~$90 a month. I said "no thanks". So instead I simply used the 7 dollar a month AOL/ Netscape account. Even if you are in the middle of nowhere there's always a phone line inside the hotel room.
.

>>>per gigabit it's a lot cheaper than dialup

Is it? Let's see. Dialup lets me download 5 KB/s which is 12 gigabytes per month, and only costs $7. i.e. 58 cents per gigabyte. Verizon Wireless or Cricket Broadband charge $40 and are capped at 5 gigabytes. i.e. 800 cents per gigabyte.

58 versus 800 cents/gigabyte. I think your statement may be in error. Dialup is cheaper.

Re:They still mail CDs ??

[idle12]

If you are in middle of no where don't get you tons of long distance charges racked up on your hotel bill?

Re:They still mail CDs ??

[rockout]

Actually I get Verizon DSL (without the usually-attached phone line) for $15/month. They call it bare-bones service or something like that.

Re:They still mail CDs ??

[lw7av]

Yeah, they fit perfectly in the cupholder on my machine.

So your disc drive is your cup holder.

Re:They still mail CDs ??

[Nethemas the Great]

While I cannot speak for you, I can say that a great deal of people when factoring in the cost of their time applied to waiting for that 500KB web page with a 5KB/s dialup would say they're being ridiculously over-charged at $7/month... You must have had one of those audio tape turned data drives for your C64 as only patience born from waiting for one of those would tolerate 5KB/s. Still, so much of what is possible on the Internet isn't even compatible with 5KB/s. When I lived in the God forsaken back of beyond with only 1.5Mbit/s satellite I often felt frustration from its limitations.

Re:They still mail CDs ??

[commodore64_love]

>>>Doesn't AOL require you to install their bloatware to connect as well?

AOL does, but their subsidiary Netscape ISP does not. It just uses a plain-jane dialing program which will work with any browser you desire. As for the DSL I do have that at home, but cannot carry it with me on my various business-related hotel trips. Hence the need for dialup.

Oh and dialup really isn't that bad. While I'm at work I typically bittorrent 5 or 6 TV episodes, and then watch them when I get back to the hotel, or over the weekend.

Re:They still mail CDs ??

[commodore64_love]

Uh.

No!

I just connect my dialup laptop to the local AOL or Netscape BBS, which is a free call. I guess if I was truly in the middle of noplace, like some indian reservation, then I wouldn't have that option but in the last seven years I've never encountered that problem.

Re:They still mail CDs ??

[commodore64_love]

>>>time applied to waiting for that 500KB web page with a 5KB/s dialup

Netscape uses accelerated dialup, meaning the images and text are compressed, and the flash videos blocked (unless you click on them). The effective speed is almost as fast as my home DSL, or about 500 kbit/s. The webpage you describe would be loaded in less than ten seconds.

Re:They still mail CDs ??

[yoyhed]

Oh and dialup really isn't that bad.

I'll still have to disagree with you on this point ;-)

What would you do?

[Anonymous Coward]

So what would you do if you were running AOL?

    --someone with a friend there

Re:What would you do?

[couchslug]

"So what would you do if you were running AOL?"

It's too late. The relentless determination to suck despite years of criticism is irreversible.

The brand is tainted, sell it off.

Re:What would you do?

[DevConcepts]

A friend on AOL... Sure.... Actually I have a friend I have been trying to get off of AOHell for years. All you can do is try to teach them about the "Real" internet and introduce them to Firefox or Chrome and whatever email program of they don't want to use web based email. Also remember to secure their computer real good because AOL has been doing the babysitting for them and they will be in the wild wild intertubes!

Re:What would you do?

[tomhath]

FTFA:

Tim Armstrong, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer. "Although we have much more significant goals for the future of AOL, we are pleased with this quarter's internal and external trends."

According to the report they went from a $90M net profit last year to a $1B net loss this year. I'm glad the CEO is pleased, but If I worked there I'd be looking for another job.

Re:What would you do?

[jewishbaconzombies]

Guess who was the last company to lose 1 billion in income in the high-tech space in a single year. Atari - 1983 - (adjusted for inflation) they lost 1.06 to 1.5 billion in one year, and were dumped shortly afterwards.

Re:What would you do?

[newdsfornerds]

The CEO will probably be paid a large bonus whether he drives the company out of existence or makes it profitable. That's how American corporations work, generally.

Re:What would you do?

[Elbereth]

Cash in on the Web 2.0 fad. Hire a hundred bloggers to blog all day long. Turn AOL.com into a huge social network, rivaling Facebook. Everyone with an AOL account is automatically added to the social network, with all privacy defaults set to "disallow all but my friends". Advertise on television that AOL is now web 2.0, more private than Facebook, and hiring bloggers.

Do they still own the Netscape brand? If so, I'd resurrect it. Make a bootable Linux CD-ROM that has Firefox on it, connects to AOL, and uses KDE as a desktop. Put them in computer stores and gaming stores. Sell them for $1 or make them free.

They could still make it through this.

Re:What would you do?

[tgd]

I've heard there are some good tractor trailer training schools out there ...

Re:What would you do?

[beelsebob]

Certainly not the last one - apple lost $1.8bn two years running in the mid 90s, and that's not even adjusted for inflation.

Re:What would you do?

[greybush]

The really sad part is that the people that work there haven't learned any lessons from AOL's failure. I work for another tech company not far from AOL in Dulles where a few of AOL's "managers" have migrated. These people are the worst or the best depending on your perspective; they can spend months in meetings justifying their existence while not creating a single thing other than paper. Their ineptitude is only surpassed by their ignorance. It is little wonder that with "managers" like this that AOL failed.

Re:What would you do?

[Anonymous Coward]

Tell him to get a job at SCO.

Re:What would you do?

[Anonymous Coward]

The CEO will probably be paid a large bonus whether he drives the company out of existence...

If the CEO is able to drive AOL out of existence, he deserves to get paid a large bonus for such a tremendous public service.

Re:What would you do?

[Anonymous Coward]

The parent is referring to companies whose net revenue declined by $1B in a single year, not those who lost $1B or more. Apple has never done that (but don't give up hope!)

Re:What would you do?

[Bigjeff5]

Certainly not the last one - apple lost $1.8bn two years running in the mid 90s, and that's not even adjusted for inflation.

There you go, it's the exception that proves the rule.

(It's a good thing nobody actually knows what that expression means, or I'd sound like an idiot!)

Re:What would you do?

[Anonymous Coward]

Advertise on television that AOL is now web 2.0, more private than Facebook, and hiring bloggers.

Facebook has been web 2.0 for ages. AOL needs to go for at least web 2.5 if it wants to get ahead.

Re:What would you do?

[Etcetera]

Everyone with an AOL account is automatically added to the social network, with all privacy defaults set to "disallow all but my friends".

Just to clarify... that would include AIM-only accounts. I know plenty of people that were never full AOL members but still have (or have access to) AIM accounts. And the more FB chat sucks, the more people are returning every once in a while to the dedicated IM land of buddy lists.

Good reason to buy back ICQ... Oh, and maybe make an investment in Skype too.

Re:What would you do?

[Tassach]

Cash in on the Web 2.0 fad. Hire a hundred bloggers to blog all day long. Turn AOL.com into a huge social network, rivaling Facebook

They tried this, multiple times. And failed, multiple times. I know, I was deeply involved with the effort. First came AIMPages.com. Millions of dollars spent, negligible uptake. Then they tried building another social network based off of the old Member Directory. That never even made it out the door. Then they bought Bebo for about 5x what it was worth and only succeeded in driving away those customers it already had.

There are a lot of really smart people at AOL down in the trenches -- some of the most knowledgeable DBAs, SAs, and developers I've worked with in 20 years I met at AOL. Most of the smart ones fled or got laid off but I still know a few of the good ones who are still there, and they are the only reason anything at AOL works at all.

Executive leadership is lacking, to say the least, and they cripple every product by trying to emulate every feature a competitor has without understanding that "actually working" and "not being slow as crap" are essential features for any product. If AOL was building houses, you'd have 3 dozen managers obsessing over having marble counters, oak cabinets, and Italian tile floors, and ignoring the workers who were telling them that the roof leaked, the plumbing backed up, and the foundation was cracked.

Netscape? They pretty well killed that brand off years ago. They bought Netscape for the traffic going to the portal site, which is why they created the Mozilla foundation and dropped the browser code like a hot potato. And the traffic that they paid so much to get? 90% of it was gone within a year of the takeover. They made a half-assed attempt to resurrect it as a Digg-style social networking site, but that took off like a lead balloon.

Re:What would you do?

[beelsebob]

Yes, yes it has, twice, in the mid ninties, when it lost $1.8bn per year, two years running.

Re:What would you do?

[Tassach]

But no one else besides Apple has the patented Steve Jobs Reality Distortion Field.

Re:What would you do?

[Tassach]

I work for another tech company not far from AOL in Dulles where a few of AOL's "managers" have migrated.

Sunrocket.com was mostly run by ex-AOL managers. "Epic Fail" is about the only way to describe that decision.

In my experience, the majority of AOL techies are top notch (At least the ones in Dulles. Don't even get me started about the clowns from Bangalore).

Management, on the other hand... well, there are some (not many) good ones, but within AOL they're hamstrung by the poisonous corporate culture. The bad ones carry the taint of that culture elsewhere and infect other companies with it.

Re:What would you do?

[twidarkling]

Er, even if it's true that no one knows what that means, it doesn't take an Einstein to query "What rule?" So you still sound like an idiot. :p

Re:What would you do?

[Elbereth]

Oh well. Seems like there should be something that can be done with all those user accounts. Bringing in new management could only help, if they're that incompetent.

Re:What would you do?

[afabbro]

AOL's bumbling foray into "social media" was their acquisition of Bebo. They paid $850 million in 2008 and sold it in 2010 (26 months later) for $10 million.

Re:What would you do?

[camperslo]

According to the report they went from a $90M net profit last year to a $1B net loss this year. I'm glad the CEO is pleased, but If I worked there I'd be looking for another job.

They do show a huge change and did have some decline in revenue, but the change is mostly from one huge item there this time that wasn't last year, a 1.4 billion dollar charge marked "Goodwill". I don't think it's actually a measure of how much people hate them but...??
It looks like a number just pulled out of a hat or someplace nasty... seems like some sort of invented figure. Here's what they say about it:

"Goodwill

During Q2 2010, we entered into an agreement to sell our ICQ operations and we completed the sale of substantially all of our assets of Bebo. At the same time, our net assets increased significantly due principally to an increase in cash and the $302.7 million deferred tax asset related to the anticipated Bebo worthless stock deduction. In addition, since April our stock price declined significantly. These events triggered the necessity under GAAP for an interim goodwill impairment test as of June 30, 2010. Based on our interim impairment analysis, we determined that, as of June 30, 2010, the carrying value of our goodwill was impaired and, accordingly, recorded a goodwill impairment charge of $1,414.4 million for the three months ended June 30, 2010."

More assets, more cash... maybe something to keep someone from taking them over at the depressed stock price? Or an excuse not to pay some of that cash on hand out to the stockholders? Corporate finance is just plain weird...

Re:What would you do?

[Tassach]

Actually, the new CEO (Ted Armstrong) is a LOT better than the old management team of CEO Randy "I don't use email" Falco and President Ron Grant (AKA Smithers & Burns). An inanimate carbon rod would have been better than Smithers & Burns, but that's besides the point.

Frankly, I doubt anyone can save AOL at this point. The corporate culture is too dysfunctional and resistant to change, there's too much baggage from obsolete legacy systems, and too many "leaders" who are either incompetent empire builders or whose conceit and reputation vastly exceed their actual ability (*cough* Ted Cahall *cough*)

Re:What would you do?

[Anonymous Coward]

You're reading that wrong. The 'loss' is writedown, which is loss of stock value. It's not realized loss, or actual money. They made half a billion dollars last quarter. They've always been super profitable, they just aren't growing.

Re:What would you do?

[commodore64_love]

If I were AOL, I would have offered high-speed to all my current dialup customers, and then used my billions worth of wealth to install a fiber direct to their home.

Re:What would you do?

[commodore64_love]

>>>Linux CD-ROM that has Firefox on it, connects to AOL, and uses KDE as a desktop.

Why did you choose KDE instead of the standard Gnome install? If because of "lightweightness," then Lubuntu (LXDE ubuntu) is actually better since it only needs 128 megabytes to run.

Re:What would you do?

[commodore64_love]

>>>Netscape? They pretty well killed that brand off years ago.

Nope. Netscape's portal page still exists (see below). It costs me $7 a month for accelerated dialup access. The actual browser was only discontinued two years ago (March 2008).

http://isp.netscape.com/
http://www.getnetscape.com/ (for new customers)

Re:What would you do?

[Peach Rings]

I don't get it... I'm trying to go to AOL keyword Chrome but it's just the site for some brand of car wax.

Re:What would you do?

[Peach Rings]

Oh man, AIM. Let me tell you, seeing AIM running on someone's computer allows you to instantaneously gauge them as a total ignoramus. Very handy.

If you must have "instant messaging" then go with XMPP. Meanwhile anyone who's anyone is still using IRC, forever the greatest and only text chat for netizens.

Re:What would you do?

[WhitetailKitten]

Investor-words.com comes up as a hit for a Google search for "impairment charge" and has this to say at http://www.investorwords.com/6840/impairment_charge.html ...

A specific reduction on a company's balance sheet that adjusts the value of a company's goodwill. Due to accounting rules, a company must monitor and test the value of its goodwill, to determine if it is overvalued. If it is, the company must issue an impairment charge on its balance sheet, to take into account the reduced value of the goodwill.

So... I guess... it's an artificial lowering of their balance sheet to reflect the fact that AOL shouldn't be making that much money if their stock is so crappy. I don't know if there's an actual financial penalty involved (i.e., that charge actually gets paid out to someone), or if that number only matters with respect to determining their stock value on Wall Street (and they didn't actually lose 1.4 billion).

Re:What would you do?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sell it off? I doubt you could even GIVE it away, at this point.

Do the world a favor, dig a hole and just chuck the whole damn thing right in. Eulogize if you must, but give it a proper burial, it's dead.

Re:What would you do?

[Belial6]

So what would you do if you were running AOL?

I would rename it to Quantum Link and start advertising to C64 users. At the rate they are going it would be more profitable than their current path, and it would certainly bring them less ridicule.

Re:What would you do?

[RobertM1968]

The CEO will probably be paid a large bonus whether he drives the company out of existence...

If the CEO is able to drive AOL out of existence, he deserves to get paid a large bonus for such a tremendous public service.

I have no idea why you were modded Funny... I would have went with +1 Insightful - though I guess the truth can be funny at times. ;-)

Re:What would you do?

[Macrat]

Also remember to secure their computer real good because AOL has been doing the babysitting for them and they will be in the wild wild intertubes!

Just get them on an iPad. Lose the computer and the dialup.

Re:What would you do?

[Macrat]

There are a lot of really smart people at AOL down in the trenches

Smart people wouldn't choose to work at AOL.

Re:What would you do?

[Reilaos]

Psh, if AOL got their hands on Web 2.0, they'd be all the way to Web 6.0 in a year.

Re:What would you do?

[JDeane]

Screw it I'm going to web 11.0!!! I want 3D Live Streaming Video Chat, 3D video games, 3D Pictures and 3D Porn!!!

lol Someday soon half of the crap I just posted will be true...

Re:What would you do?

[Etcetera]

Oh man, AIM. Let me tell you, seeing AIM running on someone's computer allows you to instantaneously gauge them as a total ignoramus. Very handy.

If you must have "instant messaging" then go with XMPP. Meanwhile anyone who's anyone is still using IRC, forever the greatest and only text chat for netizens.

Well, the point is... having an AIM account, not necessarily using the AIM client. But then, a true geek recognizes there are different tools for different jobs :) FTR I use both IRC and AIM (and MSN, and ICQ)... and I hate integrated clients.

What does AOL even do?

[Anonymous Coward]

See title.

I really dunno what they do anymore. They still in the ISP business or what?

Re:What does AOL even do?

[ratsouffle]

I think the issue here is that AOL are essentially in the same market segment as ZOMBO.COM, which does everything AOL does, better.

Re:What does AOL even do?

[Kagura]

Definitely one of the more put-together sites on the web. It sounds cliche, but I'd have to say that everything's possible at Zombo.com.

Re:What does AOL even do?

[shoehornjob]

They still in the ISP business or what?

I don't think so. How many people use dial up any more? It's an interesting question though. I thisnk their primary business (based on my observations) is a content provider. I work for a cable internet company and a lot of my customers still use them. It's interesting that the line between content provider and ISP is so blurred for some of these people. I often wonder what AOL would look like today if they invested some of that cash they made back in the 90's in a nation wide cable isp.

Re:What does AOL even do?

[commodore64_love]

Probably about the same number of households that watch TV via an antenna (i.e. 20 million).

But then how will we build our AOL CD Thones?

[Anonymous Coward]

Obligatory link to the most awesome indication that AOL had lost the plot with regards to CD mailings.

They own a gajillion blogs

[Anonymous Coward]

Things like Engadget, TMZ, etc.

There goes the Eternal September

[krzysz00]

With AOL dead, one of the primary causes of the Eternal September is over. (People won't be geting their Usenet through AOL anymore).

AO who?

[M. Baranczak]

I had no idea they were still around. What the hell do they do? Provide dial-up access?

Re:AO who?

[alienunknown]

AOL own a lot of websites. For example, AOL owns the blogs Engadget and Joystiq which are both quite popular.

Re:AO who?

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

The trouble for AOL is that, while those websites are popular, they are(at best) a tiny profitable segment that could never support the mothership.

Beyond the fact that many websites don't actually run a profit, the ones that do often do because you can trivially run them with fairly low overhead. No big corporate HQ, with lightbulbs and janitors and suits, no fancy press room, just some anonymous httpd processes running at CDNs-R-US and some stringers banging away at their laptops at home. If you are lucky, with a dash of good, such a model will pay the stringers, and the hosting bills, and maybe have something left over; but it is vanishingly unlikely that there will be enough on top to support a bloated managerial empire.

AOL, in its heyday(or, actually a bit after its heyday, which is why brokering the merger was so brilliant on the AOL side) was considered Big and Serious enough to merge with Time Warner, a company with actual revenue and actual hope. There is no way a behemoth of that size is going to be supported by Engadget and the like.

Dan's article is worth a read.

Re:AO who?

[Bigjeff5]

Indeed, you need about 20 people to run those websites, at most, and maybe $2 million a year, tops. I don't expect ad revenue to be more than about $3 million - $4 million a year, which is enough for a couple people to get rich.

They still have about 5,000 employees, though.

That's 4,980 too many to be supported by their website revenues, and is why they are losing billions with a 'b' dollars every year.

Re:AO who?

[BigDXLT]

I just hope those websites don't go down with the sinking ship. For as big of a pile of bloated shit AOL is, they're examples of the couple of things that are actually decent within that company.

Re:AO who?

[Tassach]

With luck, they won't go away, they'll just be sold off at a fraction of what they were purchased for. About a 50/50 chance.

Of course, if some executives get in a pissing match over it, all bets are off. I can think of one property (which shall rename nameless) that was actually making a profit, although not enough one to make some people happy. There was a turf war between that property and a semi-competing one, and the decision was made to shut it down.

Some of the insiders who were on the losing side of the turf war got a group of outside investors together and made a generous, multi-million dollar cash offer for the site. But no, egos had been bruised, so the offer was summarily rejected with a giant frak you, and all of the software and content was just flushed down the toilet.

Re:AO who?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yup. I was surprised they were still around, too. Even in their heyday, their demographic was those technically ignorant folks who didn't know any better. Now, even that market has wised up to AOL.

Dominant Businesses

[amiga3D]

These companies that reign on top for years like AOL always seem to be almost unable to change and adapt to new times and technology. They get locked in to their success to the point that they stagnate. When change happens they just get left behind.

Re:Dominant Businesses

[Pharmboy]

The problem was they were raking it in too thick to want to change until it was too late. The other point is that most companies don't stay in business forever. They have been around 27 years and has made more total profit than 99% of businesses. Their time is just over and I don't think anything can reverse their downward momentum. Last one to leave AOL, please turn off the light.

Re:Dominant Businesses

[drinkypoo]

The problem was they were raking it in too thick to want to change until it was too late.

Acting like you are secure as #1 is the quickest way to end up in the #2 spot. It's either incompetence, or someone relevant had something to gain by not keeping AOL going.

Re:Dominant Businesses

[Pharmboy]

If you are making $200,000 with $1,000,000 bonuses, you have a vested interest in things NOT changing. Many businesses have higher up employees who get bonuses greater than their base salary, and those guys don't want to sacrifice short term profits for long term stability. "Why should I get my bonus cut in half due to reinvestment just to make the business stronger in 10 years, when I likely won't be here?". The bank industry is another example of how this screws up a business. Managers are more worried about their quarterly reports than the long term stability of the company.

This is the prime example of the disadvantage of publicly owned companies. While it is easier to get capital for expansion, privately held companies tend to have longer term thinking. Dominos pizza didn't go public until 2004, and did an excellent job of expanding before then. Chick-fil-A is privately held and the 2nd largest chicken restaurant chain the in US and wildly profitable due to a long term approach to business. There are other examples as well. AOL is the counterexample, where they focused on short term gains and had little (or poorly thought out) long term planning.

Re:Dominant Businesses

[Anonymous Coward]

When they tried to adapt before they "merged" with Time-Warner and that really worked out badly. (While it was accounted as a merger it was a takeover by AOL in reality)

Re:Dominant Businesses

[Anonymous Coward]

On the other hand, why not design a business to be like that from the start? When you find or create a new market, design your business to ride it all the way up, and watch for new technologies that eliminate its usefulness, and ride it down while maintaining your operations economically. If done right, long term investors could still make a lot of money by holding their stock through to when the business dismantles.

This idea that a company has to last forever by doing things so far away from their original purpose is a bit ridiculous. They had an original inspiration and then they try to force subsequent, tangentially related ones. Do one thing, do it well, make your money, and close up shop at the proper time. Seems like the simplest and most natural thing in the world, and no corporation ever does it. They'd much rather fail spectacularly and leave the last stockholders screwed over.

Re:Dominant Businesses

[Bigjeff5]

In-N-Out Burger is another one you've probably never heard of if you haven't been to the southwest. Easily the most popular fast food joint in several large cities, yet there are only a handful of them because it isn't just privately owned, it's family owned. No franchising, and probably never will be any.

They treat their employees like gold too. Have you ever heard of a fast food place that pays its managers $100,000 a year to start? Assistant managers start at a little under $60,000. Part-time workers start at $10 an hour.

If you've never been, and you happen to be in Arizon, California, or Nevada, you should definitely hit up an In-N-Out Burger.

Re:Dominant Businesses

[rolfwind]

It almost seems you are talking about Microsoft (yet, whether the OS market ever changes is to be seen, having an exclusive API is a powerful thing).

Re:Dominant Businesses

[Jay L]

I think the companies that *don't* reign on top are also unable to adapt. Most companies do one thing well (at most) - ever - and if that one thing happens to intersect over time with what the market wants, they're successful for as long as that intersection lasts.

Re:Dominant Businesses

[16K Ram Pack]

You're not wrong. I worked for a business that got taken over by a private equity company. They came down and basically explained their 5 year strategy. Years 1 and 2, they weren't going to make any money. It was restructuring, investing in technology and getting the business good, and then making money in years 3-5. I was there for 18 months and they stuck to it.

Re:Dominant Businesses

[Flamekebab]

That's quite an interesting idea actually. Worth considering.

Re:Dominant Businesses

[sjames]

It's also one of the great inefficiencies in the market. AOL is still alive on nothing but inertia. The amount they're pissing away on fat executive bonuses and CDs for the landfill while they ignore the inevitable would be enough to fully fund HUNDREDS of lean and mean startups (even to .com levels) with innovative ideas.

Re:Dominant Businesses

[sconeu]

Make sure to get your burger "Animal Style"

Re:Dominant Businesses

[Anonymous Coward]

If 10USD/hr is gold (for any job) I am so glad I don't live in the US.

Re:Dominant Businesses

[Anonymous Coward]

For an entry level job pretty much ANYWHERE in the US, 10/hr USED to be quite high (when min wage in Cali was 6.75/hr at least, and the rest of the US was mostly 5.75). Much like Starbucks and a number of other places though, since min got a hike to 7.75/8.75 USD (Just in Cali? Not really sure) a lot of the entry level positions haven't increased in relation to it. Evening figuring in medical insurance and a number of other things, anything below 15/hour isn't worthwhile (15/hr is just about enough to cover rent/food/MAYBE insurance/gas in Cali, although car repairs and/or public transit could make this worse.)

Nowadays though you're pretty much screwed if you're making less than 40k a year but more than 20k (That loses you public defenders, which are less than 1500/mo income, and I'm pretty sure unemployment or welfare status, which is mostly abused by 'career lower class'. And I've seen that firsthand working a convenience store as well as shopping mostly at low income grocery stores.)

In order to just meet the basic requirements to have health care, a steady living situation, and a CHEAP mode of transportation (which RT, at least in some parts of Cali, is most decidedly NOT) you need to be making at least 2000/mo for one person and probably more like 3000/month if you want to be able to cover everything without relying on your workplace to provide it for you (retirement/stocks/medical coverage/etc).

But YMMV.

Re:Dominant Businesses

[Macrat]

In-N-Out Burger is what McDonalds was originally. A simple burger joint that excelled at their small menu.

here in northern California, you will often see the street backed up with cars waiting to get to the drive through. Very popular.

Re:Dominant Businesses

[imakemusic]

Shut the fuck up, Donnie.

(I've never even been to the US but I have heard of the In-n-Out Burger!)

Can't say I'm sorry to see them go

[NotSoHeavyD3]

But then again the main reason I hate them is because I'm a wrestling fan and they got wrestling taken off of TBS.

Re:Can't say I'm sorry to see them go

[Anonymous Coward]

Wrestling was on TBS?

Oh, you must mean that terrible acting in variations of boxing rings that used to be on TV. Thank God they're all but gone...

Re:Can't say I'm sorry to see them go

[Anonymous Coward]

Geez. Which is worse? AOL fans or wrestling fans?

Seriously, dude, wrestling?

Re:Can't say I'm sorry to see them go

[Anonymous Coward]

So you're a fan of sweaty, juiced-up rednecks hugging each other while wearing bikini briefs? Um, why?

Re:Can't say I'm sorry to see them go

[Dogtanian]

But then again the main reason I hate them is because I'm a wrestling fan and they got wrestling taken off of TBS.

Apparently TBS is a Turner-owned TV station, who got bought by Time Warner at some point, so it's probably more accurate to say that they had a common parent- except that AOL was sold off by them at the end of 2009, so it doesn't affect them any more. Though I assume they lost assloads on the ludicrous price they paid for it at the height of the dotcom boom anyway.

Re:Can't say I'm sorry to see them go

[Anonymous Coward]

well, people like what they like.

i personally find nothing interesting about wrestling, but if you like watching em, what's the big deal?

Re:Can't say I'm sorry to see them go

[twidarkling]

I hate to inform you, but if you mean WCW/WWF style wrestling, it's hardly "all but gone." The WWE is more popular than ever, TNA Wrestling is picking up steam, and smaller circuits are proliferating. The... "sport" is at an all-time high.

Re:Can't say I'm sorry to see them go

[Anonymous Coward]

Personally that sounds more entertaining to me than wrestling...

Re:Can't say I'm sorry to see them go

[ralphdaugherty]

Apparently TBS is a Turner-owned TV station, who got bought by Time Warner at some point, so it's probably more accurate to say that they had a common parent- except that AOL was sold off by them at the end of 2009, so it doesn't affect them any more. Though I assume they lost assloads on the ludicrous price they paid for it at the height of the dotcom boom anyway.

      Technically, AOL bought Time Warner, and Ted Turner was a significant owner of Time Warner at the time coming in with acquisition of his empire. They were all high on the AOL merger, talking about synergy and such. I don't know how wrestling on a TBS station plays into all that. Not synergistic enough?

Re:There goes the Eternal September

[sharkey]

Me too!








;)
I kid, I kid.

You've Got Fail!

[jewishbaconzombies]

I'm surprised they lasted this long - particularly after Warner ditched them. It's a testament to the power of people unwilling to change their email addresses mostly I bet.

Umm...

[Anonymous Coward]

AOL who ?

email accounts

[newdsfornerds]

If they went under, what would happen to the millions of aol email accounts still in use? Oh, the humanity! The only time I am ever aware that aol still exists is when my 79 year-old father forwards email to me that was sent to him from one of his elderly, aol-using friends.

Re:email accounts

[Anonymous Coward]

Even my silver surfing grandma has graduated from AOL (she uses yahoo branded dsl now).

Re:email accounts

[stumblingblock]

If they went under, what would happen to the millions of aol email accounts still in use? Oh, the humanity! The only time I am ever aware that aol still exists is when my 79 year-old father forwards email to me that was sent to him from one of his elderly, aol-using friends.

A good friend of mine still happily uses his Juno email account. Whatever happened to Juno?

Re:email accounts

[Killer Orca]

No need to knock their free email accounts. Their spam filtering may not be near as good as Google's, but they are the only other free email service to offer IMAP for accounts. Only reason I have an account still.

Re:email accounts

[commodore64_love]

Juno was purchased by NetZero which is still chugging along (and advertising on TV).
When you sign-up you can choose either netzero.com or juno.com
  although there's no real difference (same company).

Re:email accounts

[bhiestand]

Do you prefer AOL for IMAP over Google's IMAP? Or is there some other reason?

Re:email accounts

[Killer Orca]

Do you prefer AOL for IMAP over Google's IMAP? Or is there some other reason?

I use both because I like keeping a dedicated email address for subscriptions and other listservs; I have just noticed AOL's spam filter isn't as good, but it suits my needs.

All companies come and go.

[Anonymous Coward]

Facebook, Twitter, Wikipedia, Tumblr and all the current web 2.5 (2.0 was years ago) will be replaced by the next "Big Thing", and AOL might come back as the you nostalgia you lose ISP. In 2020 you will see AOL CDs with new FirefAOL 7.0 with 1 Quadrillion free nanoseconds nanogigabit internet access for your MacOS Liger and Windows 9ista.

Also Linux will still have 0.8% market share.

About freaking time

[HangingChad]

... as it continues a rocky transition from monthly subscription fees to advertising.

Maybe they should go into chat rooms and ask for help...with the CAPS lock on, of course.

Re:About freaking time

[baegucb]

Gawd. Don't make me remember about irc back when AOL users were let onto the internet. /me slaps you with a wet trout and stuff

Not much under the hood

[alphatel]

AOL is representative of the Recently Unintended but now Omnipresent American Dream: Continue to fail miserably and pretend it didn't happen.

I tend to think of myself as being connected to what's happening in the internet universe but I am completely unaware of any strategy coming forth from AOL. Ten years after the giant Time Warner AOL merger and these guys spend their dollars taking owners of Advertising.com and Ad.com to court because their domain (not the use of the domain) infringes on AOL's prior use of Advertise.com which they branded Ad.com. What?

Of course AOL has already lost the case in district court against Advertising.com which is noted by the courts as "A generic and descriptive term to the Advertising industry, such that any agency might say they are in the Advertising .com business". Advertising.com loses against Advertise.com

What else are they working on that would make everyone in America feel so proud to be a part of? I want to give these guys my money. Send me some 1995-era blue-green CDs!

Re:Not much under the hood

[Anonymous Coward]

It's somewhat ironic that one of the common complaints made about asian culture is this exact sort of 'loss of face' mentality, when in fact it appears overly prevalent in American culture as well.

Future generations won't understand...

[garyisabusyguy]

just how funny a list of 101 uses for AOL disks really is.
http://www.joke-archives.com/aol/aoldisk.html

Damn shame, kids won't have anything to shove under the front legs of a pinball machine

Re:Future generations won't understand...

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

On the internet, having a good "enforced minimalism" stylesheet to force on unruly pages can be a lifesaver...

Re:Future generations won't understand...

[Anonymous Coward]

Others not on the list that we've done and seen: Make lamp shades out of them and window reflecting window mobiles.
The two best uses I ever saw where #2: A solar stove made by screwing them to plumbers tape and forming a parabolic reflector.
And...#1: A young woman made a halloween costume by drilling small holes on the edges and wiring them together with coil winding wire. It was quite sexy cause she wore very little underneath. The best part was when she started dancing and the 28 ga wire started to give.

Re:Future generations won't understand...

[Tassach]

The conference tables in one of the AOL buildings (CC1) are actually covered with shards of broken-up AOL CD's embedded in plastic.

It was pretty cool, actually.

Re:Future generations won't understand...

[asdf7890]

I recommend giving http://lab.arc90.com/experiments/readability/ a go. It can turn some of the most eye-burning of pages into a simple block of readable content.

See patch.com

[dino213b]

"This year, AOL is spending $50 million to expand Patch nationally to hundreds of sites by the end of the year."

http://www.boston.com/business/technology/articles/2010/08/05/with_patch_aol_offers_challenge_to_local_news/?page=full

AOL is going hyperlocal - going to give local newspapers a run for their money.

Re:See patch.com

[Anonymous Coward]

So they continue on their mission to make crappy products nobody really wants?

Re:See patch.com

[emmons]

Yea, because NOBODY has tried that before...

They're the 'A' in A.I.M.

[JSBiff]

You know, they're the people that run those "AIM" servers that you can access with Pidgin, Trillian, etc.

Re:They're the 'A' in A.I.M.

[Bigjeff5]

Does anybody still use AIM? Wow. That's like using ICQ.

Re:They're the 'A' in A.I.M.

[Anonymous Coward]

You know, they're the people that run those "AIM" servers that you can access with Pidgin, Trillian, etc.

Oh yeah, I remember those about once a week when I log into my ubuntu laptop and see a strange name I barely recognize. "Who the hell is that?" I think. Then I remember it's the person I'm currently talking to through the GTalk protocol. You know, the one I actually use.

Re:They're the 'A' in A.I.M.

[Anonymous Coward]

Does anybody still use AIM? Wow. That's like using ICQ.

Yes. In the world outside of your ten ultra-chic geek friends using XMPP, the vast bulk of people still use AIM.

Trust me, it's a much larger world out here. You'd be afraid of it.

Re:They're the 'A' in A.I.M.

[Anonymous Coward]

People still use AIM? I thought that Facebook Chat took whatever was left of that userbase.

Re:They're the 'A' in A.I.M.

[anethema]

I've never met a single AIM user in my life. Everyone here (In Canada among the people I know anyways) use MSN or facebook chat. A tiny segment use gtalk, and not a single one use AIM.

Might be regional but is it really that popular anywhere?

Gosh!

[Telecommando]

I wonder what all the AOL subscribers will do when AOL goes under?

I guess they'll have to switch over to Prodigy or Compuserve.

Re:Gosh!

[afabbro]

I'd switch over to Compuserve if they still used PDP-10s

Re:Gosh!

[Tassach]

AOL Bought Compuserve a long, long time ago. They shuttered the Compuserve facility and laid off or transferred the last of the old Compuserve folks in 2008, IIRC.

Re:There goes the Eternal September

[PolygamousRanchKid]

Me too!

Please add me to the list

I kid, I kid.

No, me kid, you Jane!

and they still screwed up internet meanwhile

[Anonymous Coward]

innumerable people use shitty aol messenger. innumerable people use shitty browsers modified and issued by aol. innumerable people do not even know that their legitimate incoming emails are being filtered by aol ... glad it is going down. the next needs to be at&t.

It's Time

[thethibs]

AOL has always been behind the curve. They were the last BBS on the planet to hook up to the internet, and they've had a 90's retro feel ever since.

It's time to put AOL out of its and its users' misery.

MaGuS & FunGi!

[Anonymous Coward]

Go hire Magus and Fungi to save the FateX of AOHell! They're such Hellraisers!

Re:There goes the Eternal September

[tecker]

(People won't be geting their Usenet through AOL anymore).

They already dont. If Eternal September hasn't ended by now then Usenet is screwed. According to Wikipedia article on eternal september:

On February 9, 2005, AOL discontinued newsgroup access through its service, which it announced on January 25, 2005.

Best start hunting the source of infection again.

AOL will never be gone.

[doctormetal]

To use a quote from Iron Maiden: Only the good die young, all the evil seems to live forever.

So I think AOL will be here to stay.

One way they have stayed afloat.

[605dave]

I just noticed that AOL has appeared on my credit card bill yet again. I have not used the service since the 90s, but I am still forced to call and cancel every two years are so. I have downloaded my transactions for years, and can call up all payments. It's bizarre, after two years, all of sudden a charge will start appearing again. I wonder how many of their subscribers have been repeated scammed like this.

Re:One way they have stayed afloat.

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Historically, cancelling AOL has often involved canceling your credit card...

Re:One way they have stayed afloat.

[Anonymous Coward]

1) Cancel the creadit card
2) Take out Suit against AOL for wire fraud or other numerous illegalities. Go for $1M punative damages.
3) Sit back and wait
4) profit?...

If that don't work call the FBI. This is obviously interstate fraud.

Re:One way they have stayed afloat.

[605dave]

My credit card number has changed. Apparently there are certain kinds of accounts where they can say it was a requested recurring charge, and the number would be updated.

As for suing, it might be fun. But there are better ways to spend my days.

In this economy, AOL's going broke

[Anonymous Coward]

Me too!

Around so long that...

[RogueWarrior65]

I know a guy who has had an AOL account so long that in the early days it was hard-coded into the software.

CAN you even subscribe?

[Balthisar]

If I go to the AOL homepage, there's just a bunch of news and articles. There's no option to subscribe. Heck, do they even still have an AOL client?

Re:CAN you even subscribe?

[YrWrstNtmr]

There's no option to subscribe. Heck, do they even still have an AOL client?

Click the download link, and you can get to AOL v9.5, starting at $9.99/mo.

Re:There goes the Eternal September

[Anonymous Coward]

So does that mean we tell Green Day to wake up now?

What about winamp?

[javajeff]

What happens to winamp? Perhaps someone can take it over.

Re:What about winamp?

[Anonymous Coward]

I like AIMP.

Re:What about winamp?

[yoyhed]

This is the saddest part of this. I don't give a shit about AOL, other than the fact that they own Winamp.

Granted, Winamp is basically completely mature right now and I can't think of any more features I want. I just hope when newer operating systems are released, Winamp will still work, or that someone will take over for the occasional bugfix.

Also, iTunes and WMP work well enough for me since versions 9 and 11, respectively - when they became pretty full-featured and fast. But I still love me some Winamp - I started using it at version 2.

Re:What about winamp?

[javajeff]

I have been using iTunes since it does the best job of organizing music. I wish it had a smaller footprint, but the interface and features are the best. Also, to have the same features in winamp, you have to pay $20 for their plus version when WMP and iTunes are free. In Ubuntu Linux, I use the default player: rhythmbox.

I worked Customer Retention there in 2002. Read on

[Pezbian]

Brings back memories. People would call up, wait on hold for half an hour or more and end up on a call with me or any other SAVES rep:

*ping* (female phone voice) AOL. Saves. [connect]
Me: Thank you for calling America Online, this is Pezbian. How can I help you have an even better online experience today?
Luser: Cancel my account. (yeah. So original.)
What I'd say while playing Solitaire on the computer: I'm sorry to hear things aren't going well for you. Let's get started.
What I'd be thinking: Okay so what are you? Computer-stupid, no longer in need of training wheels, sick of overpaying or just trying to make a stand?

From there, it was a matter of talking them into staying. I probably gave away a lifetime worth of free service months in two month blocks during the few months I was there. Did it matter? No, and I'll explain why later. If you were a jerk, you got transferred or hung up on. We were taught never to hang up on lusers, but disconnecting the cord from the back of the phone didn't count as a hangup. I did it a couple dozen times when I'd get cursed at. There were often logs from previous support reps in the Merlin system regarding customer behavior so I pretty well knew who was going to be trouble and who was going to get free stuff.

At the end of the call, there were sometimes these "Special Member Benefits" where lusers would hear a speil for something else. I got $1.25 if they would just listen to it. Some people were wise. "Do you get a bonus if I just listen to it?" "Yes I do." "Well since you've helped me so much, you're going to get that bonus." Schweet. While I was there, the SMB was a Sprint long distance deal. Yeah, for a landline. Remember those? I probably got $200 a month just off of those transfers.

Pay: $8 an hour plus bonuses. Bonuses... boy howdy... 80+% of your income. I didn't believe it until I got my first 90-day long-term retention check. That's correct. Your long-term retention bonus was on a 90 day scale. Not a year. Why? Ultimately, it was because the revenue generated by each user for AOL was $125 a month. That's on top of the $23.90 a month they were charging for you to be their lab rat.

I wasn't delusional enough to expect the crazy bonus checks to last forever since the dollars for banner ads (no matter how attention-whoring/seizure-inducing) boom was already crashing hard and popups/pop-unders were starting to become the norm.

The funniest thing about working there was the special event days they'd have where Warner Bros movies that were still in theaters were screened in the call center during work hours. The techs and everyone but SAVES would be watching while SAVES saw it as a distraction from the big money. Some reps were making six figures a year. I kid you not. You were on a tiered scale where you were paid for saves per month and the more you got, the more each one paid you. Those who were making that kind of money had little time for anything else, however. 12-16 hour days non-stop. One lady hadn't had a day off in three months and slept at work sometimes, but she did make $125,000 a year this way.

In the middle of my time there, an "All Hands" meeting was called where everyone in the callcenter went to a big reception center and got put through a big dog and pony show. It was mostly about a new SAVES pay scale change that was more focused on quantity than quality. This wasn't beneficial to my style. I was all about long term. I didn't care about the average $1.50 24-hour or pissant $.50 30-day retention bonuses. I was all about the 90-day kind that paid like $9 each if I remember correctly. I was going to take a big hit on my paychecks to the extent that it just wasn't worth keeping that job.

It's worth mentioning that, during the Q&A portion, a butthurt tech dared ask when the tech support people were going to be paid like Saves reps. The suit on stage snickered slightly while the question was met with groans and laughter from Saves goons like myself. The

First, they should change their name to...

[Simonetta]

First, they should change their name to America Still Serves Here On-Line Everyone, or ASSHOLE. Then they should give free service to every one who bought stock in TimeWarner-AOL when experts proclaimed them to be the most important player in history of media and journalism only ten years ago. Stock that went from, what?, $100 a share to 10 cents a share?

    Then give free WIFI to everyone whose pension or 401K lost a significant percentage of its value because money managers believed this nonsense.

    Then have a live web-cam reality web show about the lives of the ultra-rich who took all the money from the investors and pension managers and are now living billionaire lives behind closed doors. People like Steven Case and Gerald Levin, remember them from ten years ago? New-Era Business visionaries? Can I get you another drink, sir? Both could be recycling their business talents supervising the night cleanup crew in a bowling alley on the outskirts of Tijuana. Or how about that chicken-brained affirmative-action fuckhead Perkins? Surely there is a high-school in some ghetto somewhere that he can go be a vice-principal in somewhere.

    Jeez, don't get me started. Americans get what they deserve. People generally do, eventually.

Re:First, they should change their name to...

[Pezbian]

You imply all Americans deserve to lose everything because a few douchbags got greedy?

I'm sure your homeland is a paragon of civility, honor and integrity. You're such a shining example, after all.

Smells like Eurotrash, long as we're making sweeping generalizations here.

Re:First, they should change their name to...

[sznupi]

So, OTOH, you think what such "few douchbags" do eveyrwhere is not, more or less, a reflection of given society?

From where do you think they come? Do you think that "ordinary people" despise and distant themselves from such ways, even when given the opportunity?

Re:First, they should change their name to...

[Pezbian]

So, OTOH, you think what such "few douchbags" do eveyrwhere is not, more or less, a reflection of given society?

From where do you think they come? Do you think that "ordinary people" despise and distant themselves from such ways, even when given the opportunity?

"Ignore it and it will go away" is often the only feasible approach in these situations.

I don't know where you hail from, but it's illegal to choke a douchebag here. If it weren't illegal, I guarantee it would happen more often, starting with basically every politician and banker.

I am a citizen of the USA and distance myself from the ways of which you speak. Either I'm an ordinary guy and there are a whole helluvalot more like me, or I really am a unique and beautiful snowflake. Which one is more likely? Win-win either way.

Your move... try not to hurt yourself.

AOL: non-hereditary expression of stupidity?

[Kaz Kylheku]

The dumb people who were young once and used AOL have simply not bred children who will also use AOL.

AOL has no purpose.

Given I have an Internet connection, what would be my reason to connect anything to a server in the AOL domain?

Re:AOL: non-hereditary expression of stupidity?

[Pezbian]

Elsewhere I mention my time as a retention rep for AOL. Relevant to both that experience and your post, here's a story:

When I started working for AOL, I already had Internet service through Comcast. While training, I asked if they seriously expected me to get a landline just so I could dial up via 56k modem when I had a 3mbps line already. Nope.

They had the option where you could (oh wow...) run AOL over your existing connection for the same $23.90 (at the time) price. That's right. Run my free AOL employee account over my $50 a month broadband line. While they had AOL Boardband available at the time, it wasn't available in my area for some reason, meaning I couldn't get in on the free bundle as an employee.

Dogfooding is nice, in theory, but I couldn't bring myself to use AOL even just for practice. The service felt condescending, really.

Rickroll

[Pezbian]

Everything is a rickroll

Gee, the horror

[Stan92057]

Gee, the horror,AOL decides to go non subscriber and revenues fall flat. What the hell did ya expect to happen? geezz.

How is the stock still trading?

[Posting=!Working]

How does this stock still trade? Looking at the steadily declining graphs of subscribers and revenue, how can anyone think this is a good investment? Who is buying?

I guess it's one of the unspoken rules of the free market; If money can move freely, it can move stupidly.

My implications...

[Simonetta]

Loved your post about your AOL work experience, Pezbian. It's the kind of writing that keeps me reading through the inane general comments on Slashdot looking for gems like yours.

 
You imply all Americans deserve to lose everything because a few douchbags got greedy?
I'm sure your homeland is a paragon of civility, honor and integrity. You're such a shining example, after all.
Smells like Eurotrash, long as we're making sweeping generalizations here.

I've lived in the USA all of my life. I've met a wide range of people from all social classes, ethnicity, and occupational backgrounds. I'm in my sixties, I hitchhiked across the USA many times in the 1960s. I've been around the world, but never to a communist country, Africa, or South America. I know Americans; I know America; I've seen America change over a half century.

America is doomed. And they deserve it. It's a nation of self-righteous, over-paid, ignorant peasants who took the greatest country on Earth and transformed it into strip-malled shithole. Other people in other countries have problems, sure, but nothing like this. And while, yes, I'm making sweeping generalizations here, they're all valid and true.

In my experience, the Europeans and other people in the civilized world aren't really interested in what happens to America and Americans anymore. They have more important things to deal with. We really don't matter to them anymore. We no longer have anything to offer them, and they don't find our Disneyland-based reality entertaining anymore.

If I had to sum up the entire 250 years of American vision, dream, and reality in one single image, it would be the 1975 television video of all the helicopters, arriving from the embassy in Saigon full of sleazy low-lifes desperate to come pollute the USA, being dumped into the ocean off the aircraft carrier to make room for more helicopters. All the greed, all the blood, all the lies, all the canned Jesus-sunbeam optimism, all the stupidity of the American experience in one image.

Watch for it, you'll see it again soon in a few years. Same image, but Baghdad instead of Saigon. Same war, same mentally-unbalanced people, different location, same result.

Re:My implications...

[aztektum]

Or perhaps after being one of the only industrialized nations still physically standing after WW2, we were simply lucky to get the status we did. Instead of everything coming tumbling down, perhaps things are merely equalizing. We'll adapt but won't ever have a period like the "good ol' days"(TM) spoiled old people with a chip on their shoulder about the new generation tend to have.

Re:My implications...

[Pezbian]

You're getting deeper than I thought you would. I respect your clarification.

While I can understand why your post would be downmodded Troll, I see merit in your arguments.

The road we're on isn't sustainable in the long term and the general situation just looked scary as hell during the post 9-11 Bush years when things got mixed and turned around horribly. Having a new commander in chief in office changed the tone, but it's still up in the air whether anything will ultimately change for the better out of it.

Ultimately, I believe all delusion has limits and it doesn't take much to punch the reset button. We haven't really had any major shake-ups during my time (I'm only thirty) that offered a long-lasting social landmark for the country. Like it or not, the effect 9-11 had on us was nothing in comparison to Pearl Harbor despite the difference in number of lives lost. When Pearl Harbor was attacked, a war was already going on and had been for some time. We threw down and the whole country ran like one big machine for a respectable amount of time. We became WWII at the national level, in a sense, despite arriving late to the party.

9-11 sucked, but that was a group of sneaky wackos acting against the USA while representing nobody other than their fellow wackos. Japan nailing Pearl was Japan, a "real" country, acting against the USA.

Even the Cold War and the Space Race had the country on edge for an entire generation. We've lost that kind of zeal. We need another neighborhood scuffle to get us back on our game. To get really twisty with this for kicks, if it's China or the entire Middle East getting in the ring, I welcome that. China offers a challenge in terms of sheer numbers and the fact they make most of our stuff. The Middle East is where we get most of our energy.

If either case were true, I have a feeling we'd go war machine again if we had to because we haven't lost that talent and Rosie the Riveter is far from dead. We'd learn how to be craftsmen again instead of expecting to sell each other life insurance and sue each other for a living.

I'm going to play around with this a bit so I hope the readers will bear with me. I pick on the following groups because pretty much everyone knows who they are.

Hippies are only worried about wind turbines killing birds because there's been no real constant threat to American everyday human life in a generation or more.
PETA is only worried about animal rights because they have the time to protest in fake-bloodied FunFur instead of helping to protect human lives.
Those Save The African Kids *sob* groups who spend most of their donations on TV spots are only worried about starving children over there because we're not starving around these parts, obesity being pretty good proof of that.
Religious groups... I'm just not going to go there.

I doubt we're going to have a conflict that heavy in my lifetime, but I don't think anyone would take it lying down. The American Spirit still lives on. We're bold, we're brash, we're not to be messed with. That's us at our very heart and we still have that reputation with a different, though negative, slant.

Hell, if my family was under direct attack, I wouldn't worry about how my left contact lens is bugging me right now, I'd be looking for the sharpest/heaviest improvised weapon available and worrying about guiding it to the most vulnerable part of the attacker's body with intent to remove the threat permanently. I think I've made my point and I hope nobody would, I dunno, try to reason with the attacker instead, let alone allow them to continue with lives at stake. I have no respect for anyone who wouldn't defend their loved-ones.

Sadly, peace breeds confidence. Confidence breeds distraction and that is when one is most vulnerable. I don't think we stay on our game for the sake of the game anymore. I think we do it when we have something to prove. All it's going to take is for the right fuse to blow at the right time, just like Pearl.

Oh how times change.

[RyuuzakiTetsuya]

I just realized I'm entirely dependent on AIM. My favorite gadget blog is Engadget. Owned by AOL.

I don't want AOL to die. :(.

Re:There goes the Eternal September

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, but unfortunately Google Groups is still there to pick up the slack.

Re:There goes the Eternal September

[Anonymous Coward]

The current source of infection is giggle grips, that's well known.

October

[Hognoxious]

The October that never came finally arrived?

Re:There goes the Eternal September

[wiredlogic]

Thank God. Usenet is finally safe to use again. Let's celebrate by resurrecting the dead skull of Jesus thread.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

GOOD RIDDANCE

[Anonymous Coward]

The AOL software was the bane of my existence when I worked tech support many years ago. It was clear then that they didn't know sh*t about sh*t, and now it's finally coming to fruition. Good riddance to a company that should never have existed, let alone thrived - to begin with.

Frisbees

[finalcutmonstar]

we would get a bunch of them from the local super market and throw them at each other, for some reason we thought this was fun, we were kids what can I say

Re:There goes the Eternal September

[Anonymous Coward]

You were supposed to include the entire text of the original, before adding your "Me too" comment.

Sheesh. Kids these days.

You travel but you don't look

[OrangeTide]

It seems your times traveling was wasted on you. Do you find people accusing you of not being a good listener? Do you overlook things that more observant people recognize immediately?

You try hard to stress that you're an expert on America, but a lot of what you say does not ring true. So while I believe that you believe you're an expert, I doubt you really are in reality.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Yes they still exist, boon to MMO bots everywhere

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.elitepvpers.de/forum/mabinogi/190681-mabinogi-how-play-without-us-canada-ip.html

AOL Method:

create a screen name here: AOL.com - Welcome to AOL

Quote:
DO THIS BEFORE YOU DOWNLOAD!
Sign-up for an aol e-mail account.
Let's say your new e-mail is [Only registered and activated users can see links. ]
When you get up to the last stage, your screen name is thisthing

Don't sign up using the AOL software. They will ask you about billing etc.

This is is short explaination on how to make a "Home Network under location" part when useing aol 9.0VR or later.

1. On the AOL Sign On screen, click the Connect Options button.

2. Click the Advanced Broadband Settings link.

3. Click the Continue button.

4. Click the Add a Broadband profile link. (Its in the top left corner of the Broadband tab you have to click on the drop-down menu that will be just under the sentence You are currently editing settings for.

5. In the Profile Name: box, type "Mabinogi" or something like it so you remeber what profile this is, then click the Add button.

6. Abit further down you have the Connection Type click on the drop-down menu to open it, then select "Home Network" option by clicking it.

7. Click the Save button.

8. Now when you are back at the Sign on screen you just have to change the
Connection: drop-down menu to your profile "Mabinogi"

Now all you have to do is logon to your aol account and you will have a american ip to run mabinogi with.

Re:I worked Customer Retention there in 2002. Read

[emmons]

While we're beating dead horses, this is the type of post that would have made an excellent story on Kuro5hin!

So does this mean...

[Anonymous Coward]

...that AOL is finally going to AOHell?

Re:There goes the Eternal September

[Elbowgeek]

That brings to mind the period in which AOHell opened the floodgates and let their user base access the Internet. Suddenly the Net was inundated with the internet equivalent of trailer trash (sometimes quite literally) who were clueless about its workings and etiquette. At least those who signed up through a regular Internet provider were *somewhat* clued in and more than likely slightly higher educated.

Note that not all AOL users of the time were that bad, but there were enough of them to cause havoc.

Re:There goes the Eternal September

[chadbryant]

The continuation of Eternal September has nothing to do with AOL. Google Groups effectively killed Usenet as soon as they started offering posting access while doing nothing to educate new users on exactly what Usenet is. Google Groups is now the source of the vast majority of current Usenet spam, the service is pretty much broken, and since it isn't a potential revenue stream, Google all but ignores it.

Re:I worked Customer Retention there in 2002. Read

[Pezbian]

While we're beating dead horses, this is the type of post that would have made an excellent story on Kuro5hin!

Kuro5hin? Never even been there. If it's like 4chan I'll pass, thanks.

AOL crashed and burned back in 2000

[xmvince]

AOL has been dead in my book (and pretty much everyone else's) since around 2000 when we got cable internet. Wouldn't be surprised if they had some Enron kinda shit going, as there's no way they could have survived this long legit. Oh that's right, they are also "Time Warner Cable", I forgot they had to mask their name so people might actually buy their service. Pretty funny how much of a negative reputation they had.