Time Warner Confirms Split With AOL 94
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."
Re:Why does Google have a stake in AOL? (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/16/AR2005121601892.html [washingtonpost.com]
Essentially Google gave AOL a lifeline so they (Google) could penetrate further into the online advertising market.
Re:The appeal of AOL (Score:2, Informative)
Re:The move to social networking. (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Don't feel bad at all, at least for the employees. Most of the employees are rather positive about the change and the new CEO, if today's meeting in Dulles is any indicator. There is now actually some hope that we will be allowed to be a company that understands how to sell internet services and content again. We actually have a rather large space staked out on the Internet which can be enlarged significantly, as well as better managed.
AOL hasn't been about access for years now. We still have a rather large number of people who use AOL as an ISP, despite firing the whole marketing staff a few years ago. So much so that there is actually something of a drive to pay attention to that segment again, instead of letting it die off.
Still, while the client hasn't died out, most of the work is happening on the content end. I recall some one posting here that says that we have "Engadget" and a few other blogs. Actually "a few" blogs at last count was more like a couple dozen blogs in the top 100.
No one here is pretending that we're in the same place as Google, but at the same time, we're not trying to be in the same space as Google. We'll compete in some places and cooperate or defer to Google in others. For instance, Google is in the business of aggregating News, we are now in the business of producing News, having started to hire journalists from the fading print journalism sector to actually author content. Should the new model be fully realized, we will be in a very good position to actually lead coverage in certain areas and generate much better experiences for users, which will in turn be appreciated by advertisers.
Of course, after ten years or so of problems and layoffs, no one at AOL believes a turnaround is going to be easy, or that we will be the powerhouse that once could be confused with "the Intarwebs". Bear in mind though, that we are still here nine years later, after one of the worse mergers in history, the dot-com bust, buy out negotiations AND the deepest recession in recent times. It certainly hasn't been easy, but the company has staked out a portion of the landscape and has managed to stay standing upright throughout. Considering that most of us are actually in favor of the spin-off means that this is unlikely to change.
The other way around: AOL purchased Time-Warner (Score:5, Informative)
Re:About... (Score:1, Informative)
We're not trying to compete with Google or Yahoo. Not really. Trying to directly compete with Google, particularly in its areas of expertise, would be retarded.
Yes, we have the various services that the others do, but that's mostly because they are either legacy or they contribute to the bottom line in a profitable manner. You don't have to be #1 or even #2 to be profitable in a segment, as long as your investment into the segment is smaller or that investment has mostly been made already. In the case of things like mail, boards or other things, we've had those for years and they're already there. We don't need to beat Google or Yahoo to justify them, they were justified when we *were* #1 in those services, back in the day.
If you want to see where things are going, look a lot more carefully at those "few blogs" that the GP was dismissing. They are neither few nor are they forgettable.
As for the AOL name, you have a point to a certain degree about the brand, but you would be surprised how many clients actually insist on having us use that brand when we partner with them. We might not have as "good" a reputation as some unknown startup, but everyone knows who we are, and that means that in certain parts of our clientele, the negative connotations matter not one iota compared to the brand recognition value, which is massive.