 
actor90
Phillies 2008 World Champions
Premium
join:2003-07-21
L.E.H.T., NJ
 ·Comcast
| And so the end is near.... I personally hope yahoo gets control of the aol brand and merges it in with yahoo. Then they can drop the aol name all together, move the sheep off the horribly buggy add ridden AIM to yahoo messenger, and transition aol e-mail to the yahoo mail banner. The sites aol have that have some popularity like TMZ.com and winamp.com can be moved under the yahoo brand, and the less popular sites can be killed off. Hopefully winamp will survive, I use it more then any other program to listen to my mp3's.
As for the dial up business, there will always be a need for it for back up purposes. If they sell to Earthlink, they should stream line the dial up to no thrills, and lower the price.
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My Blog on blogspot.com | |
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 | EPS
join:2008-02-13
Hingham, MA
| Re: And so the end is near.... I think the chances of Yahoo! buying AOL just took a nosedive in the past few days, thanks to corporate politics... My guess is that if anyone's going to buy the non-dialup portion of AOL, it'll be Microsoft, who would probably be better off dumping the moribund MSN brands in favor of the better-known AOL (at least in the US, worldwide could be different) | |
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S_engineer
join:2007-05-16
Chicago, IL | Re: And so the end is near.... Why not just merge the dial up with Net Zero (yes, they too are still around). They could be net-aol...or AOL-Zero!
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The "Lifetime" channel is responsible for 83% of all divorces...Robert Ginty | |
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join:2008-02-13
Hingham, MA
| Re: And so the end is near.... NetZero (now merged with Juno to create United Online) is getting out of the DialUp business too- they own Classmates.com and FTD, among others. I've seen it rumored that Earthlink is hoping to create some sort of uber single dial-up giant by buying NetZero/Juno and AOL's access division. | |
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JAAulde
yum yum yum yum yum
Premium,MVM
join:2001-05-09
Hagerstown, MD
| said by actor90  :...move the sheep off the horribly buggy add ridden AIM to yahoo messenger... Funny, I have maintained accounts on all the major IM providers for years and use programs like Adium or sites like Meebo to manage them.
In the last 2 years or so, the only IM spam I ever got was on YIM, and I got more then 2 or 3 per week. Since the only reason I maintained a YIM account was to stay up with the one person I knew who used YIM, and since that one person had started using another service and hadn't signed onto YIM in over a year, I stopped logging into it.
Then, since the only reason I maintained a Yahoo! account at all was for YIM, I deleted my Yahoo! account as well.
I never get ads or spam on AIM, though I'll reiterate that I don't use their client so I am less likely to get their own advertising. | |
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SJoe2
@comcast.net
| They will never actually disappear completely because sites like money.aol.com, mapquest, and moviefone are all hugely popular, even the main aol.com portal gets alot of news readers. I could see merging AIM and Yahoo, although AIM has a ton of customers so they will probably keep the name and just make them communicate together which would be great.
They should give the free aol client to a company that actually knows what users want, that thing is buggy and a nuisance, other then email that thing is a joke. | |
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v35_pilot
Whoops, there goes another AMU
Premium
join:2005-12-12
Fayetteville, NY | End of an era The end of an era. Another chapter closes in this journey we call life.
Remember the days when AOL was the stock to own? | |
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| axus
join:2001-06-18
Washington, DC | Re: End of an era I got the AOL 1.0 disks so I could play my first on-line game ;p Of course it wanted me to update to 2.0 as soon as I connected. I was so confused when I saw people typing emoticons, it took a day before someone explained that it was a smiley. | |
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| Corydon
Cultivant son jardin
Premium
join:2008-02-18
Denver, CO
clubs:
·Comcast
| I remember being pissed when AOL started distributing its software on CD instead of floppy disk.
The floppy disks at least could be repurposed into something useful. The CDs were totally and completely worthless.
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"Think for yourselves and let others enjoy the privilege to do so too." | |
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cableties
Premium
join:2005-01-27
 ·Verizon FIOS
| Re: End of an era said by supergirl : No, those CD cases were great. You could run over them with a car and they wouldn't break. I used to ask everyone I know to drop them off at my house when they got one. I still have a few unopened. If AOL goes under, collectable value increase! | |
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james
join:2001-02-26
antarctica
| Re: End of an era I wonder if it would increase that much (though even a value of $1 from it's current worth of $0 is an infinite increase) You may get buyers from our generation of internet users, but in 30 years AOL will be largely forgotten, even by those of us who lived through their rise and fall.
We truly have lived through the golden era of computing and the internet. Let us take some time to appreciate what we've been through, and pray that it doesn't come crashing down any time soon. | |
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asdfSpace
@comcast.net | Re: End of an era In 30 years most tech companies as we know today will be forgotten. | |
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| | kpatz
MY HEAD A SPLODE
Premium
join:2003-06-13
Manchester, NH
| said by Corydon :The floppy disks at least could be repurposed into something useful. The CDs were totally and completely worthless. The floppies were worthless too. They would develop bad sectors after a couple of uses.
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When providing an online service, such as email, 5% of the work goes into providing the service, and the other 95% goes into preventing or dealing with abusers of the service. | |
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cdru
Go Colts
Premium,MVM
join:2003-05-14
Fort Wayne, IN | Re: End of an era It's called WORN media...Write Once - Read Never. Makes great backups as long as you don't have to restore. | |
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NY Tel
Premium
join:2004-04-09
Smithtown, NY
 ·VOIPo
| said by v35_pilot :The end of an era. Another chapter closes in this journey we call life. Remember the days when AOL was the stock to own? How about Prodigy? In 1994 we got a family account which connected at 9600 baud and the BIG upgrade was when you could finally send e-mails outside of the Prodigy system (which you could not do initially) and when they offered 14,400 as a "speed increase". | |
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| | kfleming99
join:2004-02-17
Seminole, FL | Re: End of an era Oh Prodigy with my 2400 modem and 25 cents to send a email those were the days | |
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NY Tel
Premium
join:2004-04-09
Smithtown, NY
·VOIPo
| Re: End of an era said by kfleming99 :Oh Prodigy with my 2400 modem and 25 cents to send a email those were the days Well for those of you who remember the Prodigy service, here is a bit of nostalgia which I preserved. I actually use it for new mail notifications.
Enjoy! | |
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dadkins
Can you do Blu?
Premium,MVM
join:2003-09-26
Hercules, CA | Yahoo? AOL? Yahol? 
AFT AOL bites the dust, ya know? | |
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yolarry
join:2007-12-29
Creston, WV | You got yahoo mail. | |
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S_engineer
join:2007-05-16
Chicago, IL
·Comcast
| AOL... should be a case study on what not to do with a business. They had the money to expand their interests and didn't. They stuck with the same game that was being played in 1998. How sad......well not really. I personally, am not sad to see them go. They were and interseting chapter in the fledgling WWW. Now they should die gracefully instead of being paraded arould as some kind of nostolgic entity.
They remind me of the Rolling Stones...everytime I hear they're coming out with another tour, I think "wow, are they still alive?"
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The "Lifetime" channel is responsible for 83% of all divorces...Robert Ginty | |
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Corehhi
join:2002-01-28
Bluffton, SC | Re: AOL... AOL had no way to compete against local cable companies for broadband. That's what killed them. | |
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Smith6612
Premium
join:2008-02-01
united state | Re: AOL... And DSL as well. I used to have AOL before I went with Verizon. | |
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telcolackey
The Truth? You can't handle the truth
join:2007-04-06
Death Valley, CA
1 edit | said by Corehhi :AOL had no way to compete against local cable companies for broadband. That's what killed them. Why did they need to? Without TW, they were content focused and competed with Yahoo and Google. Perhaps we need a "Search Neutrality" or "Ad Neutrality" or "Portal Neutrality" where the government comes in and only allows 30% market share of any business.
[Edit: Sarcasm tag needed i guess]
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"Believe only half of what you see and nothing that you hear." - Dinah Craik | |
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join:2008-02-13
Hingham, MA
| Re: AOL... How would that work? Would people who tried to use Google get redirected to a different search engine after Google reached it's "fair" share? If AOL, Yahoo!, Microsoft MSN Live Windows Search .NET can't compete on the merits of their services, then they deserve to go out of business. | |
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Richard B
Fur It Up
join:2007-06-22
Portland, OR
·Comcast
| said by telcolackey :said by Corehhi :AOL had no way to compete against local cable companies for broadband. That's what killed them. Why did they need to? Without TW, they were content focused and competed with Yahoo and Google. Perhaps we need a "Search Neutrality" or "Ad Neutrality" or "Portal Neutrality" where the government comes in and only allows 30% market share of any business. [Edit: Sarcasm tag needed i guess] The liberal idea of competition comes out of the woodwork. It not if one can enter the market but you have to many customers so it unfair so we need government to do soothing. The problem is this: one should have the right to enter the market (only with their own property IE no line redistribution) but nobody has a right to results. We the individual have the right to choice and not to have the choice made by self appointed leaders. If a large market share goes to Microsoft or Google tough luck. | |
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| EPS
join:2008-02-13
Hingham, MA
| said by S_engineer :should be a case study on what not to do with a business. They had the money to expand their interests and didn't. They stuck with the same game that was being played in 1998. How sad......well not really. I personally, am not sad to see them go. They were and interseting chapter in the fledgling WWW. Now they should die gracefully instead of being paraded arould as some kind of nostolgic entity. They remind me of the Rolling Stones...everytime I hear they're coming out with another tour, I think "wow, are they still alive?" AOL made a genius business decision, I think... they took their stock, inflated by the dotcom boom, and used it to make a massive purchase (AOL stockholders got 55% of AOL Time Warner) and moved the company into a number of businesses not affected by the decline of dial-up, as well as getting control of one of the larger broadband ISPs, Roadrunner... of course, mismanagement of the deal and federal restrictions on synergies made real combination difficult...
Sure, the AOL Time Warner merger is often seen as a disaster, but just imagine where AOL's stock price would be without it! (Though Time Warner shareholders would probably have been better off) | |
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bronxlcsw
join:2005-09-21
Bronx, NY
·Verizon FIOS
·Optimum Online
 ·Verizon Online DSL
| Remember the Move to unlimited 19.99 per month?? My first internet experience was because AOL cleverly went from hourly charges to unlimited all you can surf plan. this was where AOL exploded on the scene. I think at the peak they had what 30 million subscribers and growing then some idiot comes along and invents tis thing called DSL and Cable internet. You would think that AOL with all the MONEY Aol made from stock sales would have allowed them to buy some cable company or even start thier own DSL service. I remember the former CEO of the older ATT Crandell i think was his name, he forsaw the future when he purchased the largest cable operater i think its cox cable? Anyway, he was years ahead of the time. he knew the future was cable, Voip and television. however, i think his move bankrupted ATT and caused it to disolve only to re-emerge again recently from Cingular. AOL had a chance to be a major player in the telecomminucations but blew it. They thought people would be on dial up for years. | |
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Richard B
Fur It Up
join:2007-06-22
Portland, OR
·Comcast
| As AOL As EarthLink The main problem with both could not get out of the ISP POP mentality. When Cable and Telecoms started to provided broadband both made the mistake trying to pretend they were a telecommunication company. I could bought dsl by EarthLink but to me it just Verizon by another name. AOL missed the sort term fix by going low cost dial-up a la net zero.
In time both could had reinvent both companies as an independent web, email, chat, forums and IM, domain name hosting company. I would leave the ISP to Cable and Telecoms and focus on content delivery. I would have concentrate alliances with Telecoms and cable to provide content and hosting services, and independent services like web and domain hosting. Other ides is a turnkey shopping cart with payment services in order compete with eBay (ether professional or casual garage sales). | |
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| hottboiinnc
ME
join:2003-10-15
Cleveland, OH | Re: As AOL As EarthLink I agree. They could have been the content/portal provider like Yahoo. The only thing is I don't think the ATT or VZ would want their customers using the @aol.com email cause then they could not control it. | |
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asdfSpace
@comcast.net | Re: As AOL As EarthLink
Like Yahoo???? Here's a news flash for you, Yahoo is a DEAD company and so is their stock. I don't think anyone wants to be like Yahoo. | |
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WALL_E
Premium
join:2003-05-28
USA
| Re: As AOL As EarthLink said by asdfSpace :
Like Yahoo???? Here's a news flash for you, Yahoo is a DEAD company and so is their stock. I don't think anyone wants to be like Yahoo.
Yahoo! may be "dead" among the technically-inclined, such as those that frequent this website, but for average users it's still a very popular website. There's nothing wrong with being #2 in the search industry. They may have a general lack of direction at this moment, but they have a lot of potential and can still contribute a lot to the industry.
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God is just pretend.
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amarryat
Verizon FiOS
join:2005-05-02
Marshfield, MA
·Verizon FIOS
| Re: As AOL As EarthLink said by WALL_E :Yahoo! may be "dead" among the technically-inclined, such as those that frequent this website, but for average users it's still a very popular website. There's nothing wrong with being #2 in the search industry. They may have a general lack of direction at this moment, but they have a lot of potential and can still contribute a lot to the industry. It's not dead for me, and I am technically inclined. However I refer to Yahoo mail (ymail if you prefer). Their web-based mail is great, and I pay the $20/year to keep the ads out and get POP access. | |
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Richard B
Fur It Up
join:2007-06-22
Portland, OR | For four yeas all my email accounts are with Insider Hosting, along with web hosting for five domains with domains bought on Go Daddy. I have no problem access them using Verizon or Comcast or any network. | |
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BF69
join:2004-07-28
Camden, TN
| Re: Demise of AOL said by Tzale :AOL has been unofficially "dead" for years now.... Ever since they made their service "FREE" (the browser component), I have considered them a historic company. I really don't care if AOL finally officially goes under. There are still a lot of people who use the free browser since that is all they're used to (people in my family included)... The internet would be completely foreign to them without their AOL portal. -Tzale While they have less than 1/3 the customers they had durring their peak they are still the 3rd largest ISP( though Verizon and Road Runner will pass then in the next quarter ). How that makes one dead I'm not sure. Dying yes, dead not yet. | |
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ncbill
Premium
join:2007-01-23
Winston Salem, NC | What about my email address? Same primary email for almost 20 years @aol.com - hope I can keep it. | |
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Sjoe2
@comcast.net
| Re: What about my email address? I still have aol email but often just use the browser email. Still the best spam guard by far and the best customizing of who can email me, etc. Other then their email though, their client software really stinks.
As far as tech companies go, many are not around very long, its the nature of the business. I expect Yahoo to be gone in the future also, I can't remember the last time I actually visited their sites or used their search. | |
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Slidetbone
Mazin Go
Premium
join:2002-11-10
Land O Lakes, FL
| All bashing aside.. You have to give kudos to AOL for hanging in there as long as it has. Many folks have had good/bad experiences with AOL, from the CD's/floppies to their service, AIM and their portal. AOL was a pioneer. Without them, all these surviving ISP's would not exist. Because they wanted to compete with AOL and did their improvements to beat out AOL and gain it's customers. AT&T, Earthlink, VOL and the slew of local ISP's made a great effort to gain AOL's customers. That deserves major kudos!
AOL opened the doors for many of us. Whether they were considered a major portal or not, I do not think there is a person here that never had an AOL account. It was too easy.
I for one cannot badmouth AOL. If it has to go, then I would like for it to go gracefully.
Badmouth it as you will, AOL made it's mark. | |
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Lee GWB
Yaco
Premium
join:2001-10-13
Allendale, NJ
·Verizon Online DSL
| Broadband dead too?? Hi,
I told the in laws.. They are not happy. They actually pay for the Broadband front end with OOL. I assume the software will die too. They use Ver 8.0
THx
Lee
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"I Don't feel Tardy"
"When Clinton Lied, All that was left was a stained dress.
When Bush lied, all that was left was 4000 less US Soldiers.. | |
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HotRodFoto
Premium
join:2003-04-19
Denver, CO
| Well I for one one hope they live I do, if only for AOL Radio, which is awesome. I use it daily and have it playing all day long, »radio.aol.com close to 400 channels and the sound quality is amazing. They really stepped it up a LOT since dropping XM
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Capturing the images of Colorado
»jdebordphoto.com | |
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ebubman
join:2002-01-17
Enola, PA | dial up? what is this thing "dial up" of which you speak? could it be possibly related to bad memories of waiting & waiting & waiting while a blue line scrolled s-l-o-w-l-y across the bottom of my screen? if so, painful memory that is repressed. | |
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Jill
@Level3.net
| AOL When I used to work at Earthlink, the joke was, AOL= Almost On Line, or America Off Line.
But truth is, for many, it was the Internet on Training Wheels. My first AOL account was on version 1.2, under DOS 3.1 on my "blazing" 8 Mhz system.
Earthlink now thinks they want to buy them. There isn't much to milk in a declining market share. I wonder if Earthlink is investing in buggy whips too. | |
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AOL: One Step Closer To Dying
Demise of AOL
