AOL versus eWorld or AppleLink
Originally posted by sjs
Thanks, I've had trouble figuring out how to do it, but copy and paste is a no-brainer.
Not that Apple would ever do it, but can you imagine how different and better their ISP user experience would be than AOL's?
See the history books for eWorld or AppleLink. Also very interesting stories on the relationship between AOL and Apple regarding licensing.
I think AOL gets a bad rap. Rememer when it started (as a Mac only thing), most people weren't online and those that were had services that really sucked. AOL quickly not only overtook Prodigy and Compuserve but ended up taking over Compuserve (as well as other properties).
In the early days of the Web, AOL wasn't the real Internet, but for many it was good enough...especially compared to how difficult it was to get online with the ISPs at the time...this was more a fault of Mac and Windows operating systems at the time.
Just as it became easier to get online with other ISPs, AOL became much more robust. Many of the arguments that I've heard against AOL has to do with things that haven't been true for at least 5-10 years.
The fact is AOL is not for everyone, but for a huge number of people acrosss the country, AOL meets their needs and does it at a relatively low price with tremendous ease of use.
AOLs current situation isn't based on the quality of their online service, but rather the affect of the industry as a whole. AOL was bringing in a ton of cash through advertising, promotion, lead generation and syndication. The dot com crash as destroyed much of this revenue. This all combined when they took over the mega-media corporation Time Warner. Also not to be overlooked is the fact that they took over many other properties (such as Netscape) at the same time.
Now I'm not saying AOLs situation is based solely on external forces. Their management, or should I say mismanagement, of some of their properties has cost them dearly. I can't imagine anyone doing a worse job with Netscape. It really makes me wonder if someone at AOL got bribed by Microsoft.
AOL's problems have much to do with the left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing. Example: Left hand thinks they can buy Netscape, integrate the browser, increase daily eyeballs by huge levels, absorb new ad and syndication partners, gain access to enterprise markets, and other benefits....the problem is that the right hand finds out after the purchase that oooops if AOL integrates the browser, we can't put our client on shipping copies of Windows.
Or:
Left hand sees all kinds of benefits to taking over Time Warner. The right hand has a problem with this because while Time Warner has some great content, AOL makes a ton of money by offering syndicated content on its service...including money that was coming in from Time Warner itself. Oh, and then there's this 3rd hand which needs to come up with $10 billion to buy out a share of a cable partnership that it doesn't even want anyway.
These are all some bitter pills. AOL will recover from this mess if it continues to recognize the mistakes it made and takes action to deal with the problems...as they seem to be now doing with Netscape and other situations.
