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AOL to be sold to Bending Spoons for $1.5B

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Re: AOL to be sold to Bending Spoons for $1.5B

#21

Post by 4ndrewl »

avrionov wrote: post #14
jjice wrote: post #13

I don't know much about Bending Spoons, but I associate them with Evernote now. Not sure if Evernote's downfall is associated with them or predates them. I never used Evernote, that's just what I hear. From what I've seen over the years, people don't like the way the product has moved and they really don't like the frequent price increases for not product change.

Evernote was in decline in more than 5 years before their sale to Bending Spoons. The sale didn't improve anything, because Bending Spoons act as private equity. They layoffs, moving the job to cheaper locations and increasing the prices.

Someone's got to cover the costs of all those non-paying users.

20 years from Bending Spoons will be the final resting place of Anthropic.

Re: AOL to be sold to Bending Spoons for $1.5B

#23

Post by ascagnel_ »

alberth wrote: post #4

At one time, AOL had a market cap of $200B https://www.cnbc.com/2019/08/15/how-aol-dominated-the-intern...

I always look at the AOLTimeWarner merger as the thing that broke them, distracting them at the moment they should've been prepping to roll out broadband. I also look at that merger through the lens of "don't fight a land war in Asia" in terms of breaking empires -- "don't let your company acquire Warner Bros.".

Re: AOL to be sold to Bending Spoons for $1.5B

#24

Post by nemothekid »

underlipton wrote: post #19
Jordan-117 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In addition to ads on their web properties, they still have a sizeable (though aging) userbase that they milk for unnecessary services. I cancelled my mom's AOL subscription years ago and they were charging something like $25/mo when the only thing she used was their (free) email service -- though of course during the cancellation they touted things like antivirus and ID theft protection that she apparently had acces…

"Unexamined legacy subscriptions paid without a thought," is another way of saying, "Has too much money." If this is a widespread Boomer phenomenon, it explains a lot. I still kick myself for spending 6x MVNO pricing on my cell phone plan with a legacy carrier whose features I didn't need.

>"Unexamined legacy subscriptions paid without a thought," is another way of saying, "Has too much money."

I constantly see ads for services like RocketMoney which helps people find and cancel subscriptions. I could arguably be in the "too much money" camp, but I couldn't imagine seeing an unknown/unused charge on my credit card bill and not immediately cancelling it. Nonetheless, RocketMoney seems like a widely used product.

Re: AOL to be sold to Bending Spoons for $1.5B

#25

Post by ascagnel_ »

mikestew wrote: post #10
NickC25 wrote: post #7

what does AOL even do these days? genuinely curious.

It wasn't until the end of last month that they finally turned off dialup: https://help.aol.com/articles/dial-up-internet-to-be-discont... And I have people in my contacts whose active email ends in "@aol.com".

At least for my parents, there was a real fear of losing access to their 20+ year old email address if they stopped paying. I don't know if it was founded on anything, but it got them to keep paying through a decade-plus of non-AOL broadband.

Re: AOL to be sold to Bending Spoons for $1.5B

#28

Post by marstall »

pavel_lishin wrote: post #17
neom wrote: post #2

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bending_Spoons Interesting comment from last year: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38968476

> In November 2022, Bending Spoons agreed to acquire Evernote.[19] The acquisition was concluded in January 2023.[20] In July 2023, Evernote laid off all of its existing staff and announced it would relocate to Europe to be closer to Bending Spoons' headquarters.[21] Damn.

How does that possibly work? How do they continue with zero of the staff?
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