Does AOL have legs?

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I don't understand what Time-Warner sees in AOL. All AOL has going for it is a set-up interface that really works; after that it's slow and clumsy.

AOL via cable (where the set-up is done by the cable guy) becomes just another portal-page, and can't charge $20/month nor anything close to that.

Even if the AOL cable guy gives you AOL-only software, as soon as someone starts handing out free CD-ROMs with a clean auto-install for an alternative set of Internet apps, AOL is a goner.

But what else does AOL offfer, that makes it so much more successful than WebTV?

-- Jorn (jorn@mcs.com), January 12, 2000

Answers

You misunderstand the deal. Time Warner didn't buy AOL, AOL bought Time Warner. It's what AOL sees in Time Warner that matters: cable systems and decades of content. Magazines, movies, music. It's a gold mine.

-- Niel Bornstein (niel@bornstein.atlanta.ga.us), January 12, 2000.

This is a marriage of the doomed.

AOL has so many things going wrong for it I don't think I could list them all here. But: expensive, lame portal, no-smut (I don't care about this so much, but smut drives new media. Why do you think you have a VHS VCR and not a beta one?), they focus on things that I think are a flash in the pan (like ecommerce, because nothing will ever change the fact that people like to shop in person), and finally and most important, they are expensive and you can get cheaper online access from virtually anyone.

Time Warner, like most media companies, also faces problems. Intellectual copyright is an almost extinct dinosaur . . . all these "content" companies are being hit hard by bootlegging and copyright infringement. There was an article recently on the wires about how MP3 is really hurting the recording indsustry. My buddy bought a copy of the Phantom Menace one week after it was released from a street vendor in NYC. Perhaps by allying themselves with a big online company like AOL, they can figure out a way to do effective digital watermarking or some similar protection . . . but I bet they'll be ways around whatever they do.

Here's what I think: Those guys on the stage the other day from Time Warner are far more shrewd than anyone at AOL . . . they found a sucker to buy their doomed company and their weak brands and they're cashing in - Ted's probably got some legal bills on the way, and he's cashing in his Time Warner chips.

The bubble will burst.

-- Bob mall (bmall@wt.net), January 12, 2000.


You're silly.

-- winky (Billfoo@bar.com), January 20, 2000.

all i know is there is a cute guy named lino in argentine office of aol...

-- sarah (saraha@hotmail.com), February 10, 2000.

Dammit Jim, AOL has MOMENTUM among the RETARDED INTERNET PEOPLE. Alot of things are bad for you but you buy them anyway. AOL is comfort food, AOL is another sublimation of Freud's deathwish bullshit. AOL is the Media usher for apocolyptic seizure storms about to ring the planet like a broken payphone. WATCH out! AOL is to Shiny Happy People as Twinkies is to ???

-- Mr. whangdang_doodle (whangdang_doodle@hotmail.com), July 17, 2000.


all i know...is this connection via cable here in epsom NH...is rather slow...wish aol would address this problem..i pay enough to both providers..i only want what has been promised ..speed...so where is it??????? bugsy

-- mike morani..aka bugsy (bugsym48@aol.com), September 19, 2002.

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