Time Warner Takes Steps To Finally Spin Off AOL
from the a-bit-late dept
As part of Time Warner's earnings conference call, the company noted that it will be splitting AOL into two parts: cutting the rapidly shrinking access subscriber business from the content/advertising business. Many folks are assuming this is in preparation to finally sell AOL off. Of course, like so much that AOL/Time Warner has done over the years, this is too little too late. Remember the happy days in the 90's when AOL would come out with a press release announcing every million new subscribers? Funny that they don't do that for every million lost subscribers... However, it's been those subscribers that have hindered AOL's ability to adjust. For years, they were afraid to do too much with free content to lose that subscription base, even as that subscription base was figuring out that they could already go elsewhere and get the same content for free (and buy access for much less). So, when the company finally adopted a free model, it was too late to simply throw the doors open. People just weren't that interested. The same is true now. Time Warner had a chance to salvage AOL years back, if they had aggressively tied it to a broadband strategy rather than competing with itself and giving lip service to a more complete strategy which never actually seemed to happen. Finally separating out the dwindling access business is hardly going to catapult the rest of the business forward, as most people have simply moved on to other sources. While the sheer size of AOL's traffic can hold it up for a while (and may make it an attractive buyout for someone looking only to buy some traffic), it's lack of innovation and growth have pretty much doomed it to also-ran status.
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Filed Under: broadband, mergers, portals, spinoff, strategy
Companies: aol, time warner
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
AoHELL
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: AoHELL
One word.. GREED.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
YAY I CAN BUY EA GAMES NOW!
The reason I did this is because of the manipulative brute force tactics used by AOL sales people, the difficulty in removing AOL and canceling it, the IMPOSSIBLITIY of AOL getting their billing correct.
POGO double charges people for their account. And if you try to complain they will threaten to remove all of your badges and tokens. AOL signed my mom up for several "Additional Features, at no extra cost*****" It cost an extra $30 a month for features she 1. Didn't understand, 2. didn't use.
I hate AOL. EVERYONE HATES AOL. As far as software failures go it surpasses even Windows ME.
So why should anyone care if the company goes down like a shot pigeon falling from the sky? Because some old people use AOL and don't know a lot about computers. They think their mail is sent to their computer, like real mail. They think that AOL is the "real internet", and every other internet company just lets you use the AOL internet (real comments by computer repair customers).
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Good Riddance AOL
It's great to see AOL finally dying. One of the most hated companies throughout the land.
And that hate is well deserved. From offering their customers their own special view of the web using a mangled browser and a restrictive firewall to making it almost impossible for their subscribers to terminate their service, the death of this Internet dinosaur is a long time coming.
Good riddance AOL.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
AOL Veteran
Then used it all the way through version 5.5. Then we dropped it for NetZero (which was free at the time) and then I got cable internet and never went back. I didn't know what I was missing.
the relief was like having been cured of some horrible gruesome disease.
Goodbye, AOL.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: AOL Veteran
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
AOHELL 4.0 FTW
7, 8 and 9 were the viruses (was there a 10?), about 2 years ago, when I was very poor, and had NO form of internet, I borrowed a neighboors phone line late at night, and used AOL to get net access, after some experimenting I found that 4.0 connects faster then any other version after it. 38kbs vs 28kbs.... just something worth noting.
It's still really slow, especially considering that, the dial up access was being daisy chained to 8 other computers...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: AOHELL 4.0 FTW
We had 3.11 on a 386 when I downloaded the 3.0 update (took like three days or something). The program took about 15 minutes to load. I'd open it up and it'd come to the big screen window. Then I'd go have dinner and come back just in time for it to finish loading.
I liked the login key that got struck by lightning, but in 4.0 they changed it go the little man running.
Damn, I can't believe I remember all this.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
NetZero
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
yeahh
About time anyway..
[ link to this | view in chronology ]