Saudi Prince Buys AOL and Priceline

Yahoo ^ | 3/11/02 | Reuters

[youaculpa]

To switch from AOL IM don't switch to MSN. Try out jabber. It's an OpenSource instant messenger that speaks to AOL/MSN/Yahoo/IRC as well as "native" Jabber servers. It works great. Check it out at http://www.jabbercentral.org There are Jabber clients for Windows/Mac/Linux/PalmPilot/etc.

[Bush2000]

It wasn't long ago that "Prince" Alaweed (aka camel jockey with an appropriated title) was touted as a brilliant investor on Wall Street, and he coyly suggested that he had some kind of special system for picking stocks. Of course, that was back in the days when you could invest in practically any tech investment and show a 30 to 50% gain. Last I heard, Alaweed's portfolio had dropped by 50%. He won't be crying poor anytime soon ... but, then again, he's no longer looked upon as some kind of savant.

[Bush2000]

Well I hope you sell high, but AOL Time-Warner is about as disgusting as it can get.

AOL is a gutter stock. I wouldn't touch it. It has very few opportunities for growth. Even before the merger Time-Warner was stagnant. AOL was supposed to infuse TW by providing alternate outlets for selling and distributed content -- most importantly through broadband. AOL-TW executives had dreams of selling consumers broadband, pay-per-view programs from their video library and other types of merchandise. So far, it hasn't turned out that way. AOL has been blocked from significant chunks of the broadband market, there was an article yesterday detailing how its supposed 34M subscriber roll is packed with freeloaders paying nothing for service, subscriber churn is getting worse, and it doesn't look like the "convergence thing" is working out as planned. Caveat emptor.

[RedBloodedAmerican]

A better title would have been "AOL Comes Out Of The Closet"