The AOL-Time  Warner Fiasco

This column does not have a single author, but is submitted by a number of experts that contribute regularly to our news source.  Some are in Canada, some in the UK and one is in the far east

(continued)

One of the biggest mergers in the history of business up to that time in 2001 was the ill conceived AOL-Time Warner fiasco.  The press and financial community somehow got taken in by this.  We in the technical field, were amazed by the merger.  We knew it was a non-technical decision.

It was soon evident that AOL was doing a takeover and not a merger.  Time Warner was a Ted Turner company and they had something of value namely CNN.  AOL had NOTHING

Anyone familiar with the Internet then or now thought AOL was a giant scam.   They got in the way of using the Internet.  AOL had a chat forum too and once installed they were like a germ that would replicate itself on unsuspecting user's computers.  I personally spent hours getting rid of it from customer's and friend's machines.

After a while it took on an 'Evil Empire' persona in my mind.  It was like a mutating virus.  Once I could show the real Internet to people, they were amazed by the dark curtain that AOL tossed over such a wide landscape.

AOL prided themselves in their Email offering. What offering? They only trouble was it was a very poor product and Time Warner, when faced with using it, was crippled for a while.

How did this merger happen:?

(next column)

31/05/2009 11:59 AM

The timing was right in 2001 at the height of the dot com boom.  AOL used its terribly inflated stock value to engineer the merger.  That's what happened.  It was greed. The real question is why?

AOL had no protectable technology.  Everyone who worked in the industry could see that, but the stock market loved them.

How can you have a product that you believe in that's main value is hiding a much better product? 

hey had accumulated a big customer base that was dial-up.  They missed completely the cable and DSL revolution and they got left in the dust by Google, Firefox and others. 

Microsoft's Internet Explorer laid waste to their non-browser based offering.  They did make an attempt to get going with Netscape, but it was far too late.  They had hype, but very poor management.

I don't see AOL customers anymore and that's a very, very good thing.  The sage Ted Turner who started CNN says that the AOL Time Warner merger was the "worst mistake of my life".  It sure was a  lousy company headed by hype people with no substance.  Remember the AOL CDs that flooded the mail and got on to new machines prior to shipment?  The free trials?

Well, this week the paper tiger who ate a good company was dropped by them.  CNN continues and will be much better without the dead weight of AOL 

What's surprising is that Ted Turner did not consult or listen to the hundreds of experts who were shouting that AOL had nothing.  He does not make mistakes like that.