AOL Mulls Breakup, Then Merger with Yahoo

CommanderFrank

CommanderFrank

Cat Can't Scratch It
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The one time Internet giant AOL , is reported to be exploring a split off of its dial up internet and display advertising services. The internet business will be sold off and the remaining holdings will be merged with Yahoo. Once known as the world’s largest online community, AOL has suffered loss of membership to faster broadband ISP carriers.

Combining Yahoo and AOL's web properties makes strategic sense, said Todd Rethemeier, analyst at Hudson Square Research, Inc. Yahoo's home page attracts audience to its sports, finance, general news and email, while AOL, has strengths in maps, and entertainment news, Rethemeier said.
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MajorDomo said:
The one time Internet giant AOL , is reported to be exploring a split off of its dial up internet and display advertising services. The internet business will be sold off and the remaining holdings will be merged with Yahoo. Once known as the world’s largest online community, AOL has suffered loss of membership to faster broadband ISP carriers.
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Waaaait... AOL never went broadband? Hahahaha oh lawd.
 
Cyraxx said:
Waaaait... AOL never went broadband? Hahahaha oh lawd.
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I hated AOL's broadband service because it wasn't Always On. You'd have to login just like you would with dial up and keep AOL running in the background. This wouldn't be as big of a deal nowadays, but back then I only had 512MB RAM.
 
Cyraxx said:
Waaaait... AOL never went broadband? Hahahaha oh lawd.
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They had some deal with Time Warner Cable for broadband (it might have still been Adelphia then). You still had to log in to AOL though, which was weird.
 
wizdum said:
They had some deal with Time Warner Cable for broadband (it might have still been Adelphia then). You still had to log in to AOL though, which was weird.
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Yeah it was Time Warner for the Cable side of AOL Broadband. I dont remember who handled their DSL operations.
 
450 said:
Yeah it was Time Warner for the Cable side of AOL Broadband. I dont remember who handled their DSL operations.
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Roadrunner is AOL too. Quite popular around Kansas City. My older brother used to have to install the AOL software to install the login authenticator, but it's no longer required.
 
They used to annoy the crap out of me with all of their CD's...

I'm amazed they are still alive with dialup only.

Even my troglodyte parents got DSL a few years back. I don't know anyone who has a modem anymore, and haven't for YEARS.

I also did not know that AOL had a map service. I used to use MapQuest until Google maps was launched and I made the switch. Now I never use anything else.
 
The real question is who will step forward as the main provider of brittle plastic frisbees to our nation's children?
 
hey quit trashing AOL. until they moved to CDs I didn't have to buy floppies at all :D
 
MajorDomo said:
Once known as the world’s largest online community, AOL has suffered loss of membership to even the most unknowledgeable computer users realizing they could get on the Internet without AOL's AOL browser and that AOL and the Internet were not sychronized terms
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EFT.
 
Zarathustra[H];1036526757 said:
They used to annoy the crap out of me with all of their CD's...

I'm amazed they are still alive with dialup only.QUOTE]

What used to amaze me was that I received those CDs in a Canadian city up north where we had no local-phone number to call so to access AOL's Internet service would have required long distance charges at $0.14-$0.28 cents a minute or so making the '10 hours free' more along the lines of $25.00 to your phone company. Meanwhile, local ISPs existed. Why would we ever use an ISP that required long distance charges? and with that in mind, why even bother sending us the CDs?
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Valset said:
hey quit trashing AOL. until they moved to CDs I didn't have to buy floppies at all :D
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Ahh, I wish that were the case for me. I was living in Europe back in the days before CD's.

I bought a lot of floppies back then... :p
 
AOL should of not been so douche and sold their company when they had the chance.

Now merging with Yahoo is just going to be like adding a $20 bilge pump to the Titanic. Shit is STILL going down LOL!
 
Clipped: "AOL, has strengths in maps"

AOL Maps? MAPQUEST??!?! Wow, that's a lie. Mapquest is very, very weak.

That's why everyone says they end up at a deadend with mapquest, I heard that lots of times a few years ago.... I haven't heard the word mapquest AT ALL since that. Plus GoogleMaps being Free and much better, mapquest is very far from an AOL "strength"

AOL just quit, just leave the internet and cash out what's left of your winnings (if any)
 
450 said:
I hated AOL's broadband service because it wasn't Always On. You'd have to login just like you would with dial up and keep AOL running in the background. This wouldn't be as big of a deal nowadays, but back then I only had 512MB RAM.
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I thought that was one of the "benefits" of Broadband... always-on connection and no need to login, it was just running :eek:

Apparently not..
 
Did none of you read the article?

AOL is in better shape than you think. They have 2.4B in revenue, with 1B from dial-up, and 1.4B from ads. They also have 600M in cash, and almost no debt. Sounds like a pretty well run company to me, although the article did note that they are losing hundreds of thousands of dial-up customers every quarter, so they have to do something about that side of the business.

I was surprised that Earthlink is still around.
 
I know tons of older folks (mostly nuns/brothers) who still use the AOL client for their AOL email. Tried to get a few of them to switch to gmail, but they weren't interested.
 
thefreeaccount said:
I know tons of older folks (mostly nuns/brothers) who still use the AOL client for their AOL email. Tried to get a few of them to switch to gmail, but they weren't interested.
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If you get rid of AOL you still get to keep your AOL email.
 
I wish someone would sound the death knell at AOL so I can finally get my parents off of it and on to cricket or verizon wireless. My Dad refuses to move because of "all the tech support I get from them". Nevermind that it's AOL that's causing him to need tech support....
 
Spectrum17 said:
I was surprised that Earthlink is still around.
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Why? They are profitable in basically the same way that AOL's dialup division is profitable. Everything's paid for and the costs are largely fixed at this point so its basically is free money. Sure the amount of money is dropping but the only time they really started to lose it was when they tried city wide wifi and funded helio. I don't agree with them buying even more dialup customers to delay the inevitable, but hopefully it's to buy time for them to actually do something new that works.
 
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