AOL GONE

New York Post ^ | 8/12/03 | TIM ARANGO

[kattracks]

August 12, 2003 -- AOL Time Warner may drop its embarrassing first name.

The boss of the popular online-service provider has asked that the familiar moniker AOL be dropped from the media behemoth's official corporate name - because the scandals surrounding the company are hurting his "consumer brand."

[goldstategop]

Awww... AOL can't gain revenue being part of Time Warner?? No wonder they're pushing to hit the delete button... not that I feel at all sorry for them.

[Unknown Freeper]

What goes around comes around....

[EternalVigilance]

So here's the question:

Will it go to aohell, or just purgatory?

[onyx]

So, AOL is SOL?

[goldstategop]

Steve Case's company was over-inflated in value due no doubt to the dot.com bubble craze. When it finally crashed no wonder the online service's value tanked. Its a mystery why none of the principal players involved saw it coming.

[goldstategop]

It'll be around. Its too big to die but it won't push the new media thingy for a long time yet. As it was it turned out to be one of those ideas ahead of its time. Someday someone will get a media synergy concept right but it won't be AOL who'll get it done.

[EternalVigilance]

You may be right. I was just looking for any excuse to call it 'aohell'.

LOL...

[ambrose]

It had hype and momentum. When you have that people will suspend all critical reasoning in a desire to jump on the bandwagon.

[Timesink]

Steve Case's company was over-inflated in value due no doubt to the dot.com bubble craze. When it finally crashed no wonder the online service's value tanked. Its a mystery why none of the principal players involved saw it coming.

Steve Case saw it coming. That was his plan all along; ride the wave until AOL's value was so grossly inflated that it could eat a legitimate company with an actual business model. After that, AOL's inevitable collapse would be the combined company's problem. Which is exactly what happened.

Steve Case may have lost his job, but he walked away richer than when he started. If AOL had stayed independent, it probably wouldn't exist today.

[rockfish59]

I have 'Tx3'

It does the job and that's all I want.

[Jimmy Valentine]

"Steve Case's company was over-inflated in value due no doubt to the dot.com bubble craze. When it finally crashed no wonder the online service's value tanked. Its a mystery why none of the principal players involved saw it coming."

Based on the accounting fraud e.g., overbooking revenue etc., etc., etc., I think they did. Case was trying to hold it all together until he could get away with the very big chunk of cash he did.

By the way, I will bet anyone on this forum that he does not own a single share of AOL Time Warner at this time.

Regards,

[Jimmy Valentine]

Sorry. Didn't see your post until after I posted.

Great minds really do think alike don't they? [self effacing modesty turned back on]

[Bullish]

But what about all those millions of disks in the mail?

They're sure to bring in oodles of new customers. (snicker)

[OXENinFLA]

How did AOL buy TIME Warner?

[Beck_isright]

Does this mean they will be dropping their other embarressments, Ted Turner & CNN also?

[capt. norm]

I always thought of them as LOL as opposed to AOL.

[AD from SpringBay]

Will it go to aohell, or just purgatory?

That depends on how many aolindulgences are sold, who buys them, and how much they are valued.

[Xenalyte]

Since the takeover, the combined company has lost close to $200 billion in market value and seen its employees' retirement accounts - mostly made up of company stock - get decimated.

And the fact that the service is crappy, slow, intrusive, and riddled with security holes has absolutely nothing to do with it.

I would add that if AOL employees are foolish enough to have their retirement accounts mostly in AOL stock, as the article states, they deserve the losses that are coming to them.

[Tex-Con-Man]

But what about all those millions of disks in the mail?

I have the 8.0 coaster. Iced tea weather down here in Texas, ya' know, but the AOL disk does a GREAT job keeping the moisture off of my solid oak desk.

Do I have the latest version? Or is it time to uprade.