Verizon to Buy AOL for $4.4B • Hacker News Board

Re: Verizon to Buy AOL for $4.4B

#141

Post by [deleted] » Tue, May 12, 2015, 3:31 PM UTC

toxican wrote: post #57

fallous wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I too worked for AOL at one time, after they bought Netscape who happened to be my employer at the time. I very quickly took a severance option they were offering. There were also plenty of developers that fell under the iPlanet umbrella working for Sun/Netscape that later felt the axe. Don't think that everyone who worked at AOL were a bunch of "you've got mail!" chatroom admins.

>Don't think that everyone who worked at AOL were a bunch of "you've got mail!" chatroom admins. Who in this community would think that??

[deleted]

Re: Verizon to Buy AOL for $4.4B

#142

Post by ceequof » Tue, May 12, 2015, 3:33 PM UTC

georgeott wrote: post #77

tootie wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AOL might be the ultimate company that missed the boat. They practically owned the internet in America in the 90s and just let the whole thing get away. They had pole position to be Google+Facebook at once.

They owned a closed "Walled Garden" version of the internet. Once the open internet took off, AOL was doomed.

What, how is that at all different from any of the hugely profitable tech companies today? Apple, Facebook, Twitter, Uber, Airbnb, all of them operate closed platforms.

Re: Verizon to Buy AOL for $4.4B

#143

Post by jasonlbaptiste » Tue, May 12, 2015, 3:35 PM UTC

mooredinty wrote: post #18

For the past couple of years, AOL has been a place where companies go to die. Will Verizon pick up that mantel and continue offering the much needed "Death with Dignity" service for waning tech companies?

Not true at all - HuffPo has grown, Adapt.tv is a big win, 5Min was the foundation for video (they're top 3 now), Weblogs Inc setup content division, etc. I'm sure there are some bad deals done, but they've had a great track record on buying+integrating.

Re: Verizon to Buy AOL for $4.4B

#144

Post by krisdol » Tue, May 12, 2015, 3:38 PM UTC

dangrossman wrote: post #73

codingdave wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does dialup have to do with email? You still need connectivity to access free email providers. And for older folk who do nothing other than email, do not have smartphones, but do have a landline... 20 a month on dialup makes more sense than 50 a month for Comcast. Sure, it sounds ridiculous to us who are permanently connected and do not even have landlines... but to the 65+ community, there really still is a sma…

He may have been being more literal than you think. I can name 3 people that were paying for an AOL subscription because they thought they needed to keep it to keep using their AOL e-mail addresses. They all had broadband from their cable companies, they weren't dialing up.

They may have needed it at one point. At the time I quit AOL, there was no way to keep the email address, and they did not provide IMAP access or forwarding. Seriously. They (very badly) practiced the lock-in attitude. I just visited mail.aol.com and realized that things have changed a lot.

Re: Verizon to Buy AOL for $4.4B

#145

Post by rokhayakebe » Tue, May 12, 2015, 3:49 PM UTC

jenius wrote: post #20

huskyr wrote: post #15

For those who are wondering why this might be a good investment: AOL still has 2 million (!) dialup subscribers that fork over $20 a month. http://qz.com/401567/more-than-2-million-american-homes-are-...

I feel like this is a perfect reason why this is a bad investment. Anyone who is still subscribed to AOL dialup is honestly probably a senior citizen or technology-illiterate. AOL is not even marketing their dialup service anymore. These people over time will slowly decline until those 2 million eventually hit zero. In fact, you can clearly see the nearly exponential downward trend right on the article you linked. Th…

I feel like this is a perfect reason why this "may be" a good investment. These people may be switched to Verizon's wireless internet services.

Re: Verizon to Buy AOL for $4.4B

#146

Post by todayiscrown » Tue, May 12, 2015, 3:52 PM UTC

bluedino wrote: post #129

r00fus wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They had years to invest in the open internet, buy out a successful internet venture, or adopt internet features into their offering. They failed to do all of the above, and are now in the dustbin of history (and to me, are solely remembered for their acquisition of nullsoft who then created Gnutella - predecessor of P2P file sharing services).

>> They had years to invest in the open internet, buy out a successful internet venture, or adopt internet features into their offering. None of the big ISP's from the 90's "made it". Earthlink, Netcom, Prodigy... They were all either acquired, went bankrupt, or became DSL resellers. They didn't have any content so they were worthless as broadband took over. There's only a handful of dot-com's still around from those…

Hmm .. May be they could have bought sbc/att/Comcast/twc? Given their valuation at that time, they could have bought pretty much anybody.

Re: Verizon to Buy AOL for $4.4B

#147

Post by etr71115 » Tue, May 12, 2015, 3:54 PM UTC

WDCDev wrote: post #7

To give you some perspective. When Time Warner and AOL merged back in 1999, AOL was valued at $166 Billion.

$228 billion in 2015 $

Re: Verizon to Buy AOL for $4.4B

#148

Post by brandonmenc » Tue, May 12, 2015, 3:57 PM UTC

paulhauggis wrote: post #136

HarryHirsch wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

if low wage, and probably lower skilled workers can take your job, you probably suck The alternative hypothesis is that you are overqualified. You may not have been overqualified when you took the position but now you are. De-skilling is a very real phenomenon in the workplace. The xenophobic uncle has seen more than you and may well be the wiser man. Sometimes the country on the other side of the border is the enemy…

"The xenophobic uncle has seen more than you and may well be the wiser man. Sometimes the country on the other side of the border is the enemy." Open source has also cut many jobs and devalued salaries, but many don't see it this way. As businesses get more tech savvy (which is happening fairly quickly), they realize that they don't have to pay software engineers to build software any longer. They can take open sourc…

> Open source has also cut many jobs and devalued salaries

The flip side is that open source fueled the web explosion.

Example: you don't need a multi-million dollar IT team to have a storefront, because you don't have to hand-build a framework. How many people here are making over $100k/yr doing computer stuff for a business that wouldn't have dreamed of hiring someone to do computer stuff twenty years ago?

Without open source, we'd probably just have a small priesthood building WebObjects front-ends to mainframes, and only Fortune 500 companies would be able to afford a web presence.

Re: Verizon to Buy AOL for $4.4B

#149

Post by rhino369 » Tue, May 12, 2015, 4:05 PM UTC

tw04 wrote: post #72

lxchase wrote: post #63

While many are seeing this as bizarre, it is not. This is a programmatic and verticalization play. Verizon has been investing in adtech companies and provides the means of distribution. The deal allows them to now own the content as well. As someone in the advertising agency, Verizon has been one of the few telecoms that have enabled advertisers to utilize their data. This deal furthers their ability to tie mobile da…

It's not the least bit bizarre, but it is EXACTLY what people are (or should be) afraid of. The people who own the pipes should NOT own the content, or they will be incentivized to leverage their monopoly on our computer screens to provide unfair advantages to their content. The FCC should have drawn a line in the sand and been done with it before the Comcast deal was allowed to go through (but of course the head of…

Why not apply that to other things?

Why is apple allowed to sell hardware then dictate who can sell apps for that hardware after it is sold?

Why can google use its search engine monopoly to push chrome, android, maps, etc. etc.?

Re: Verizon to Buy AOL for $4.4B

#150

Post by dboreham » Tue, May 12, 2015, 4:05 PM UTC

fallous wrote: post #31

ra1n85 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Recently, a woman that I shared an elevator with commented on my laptop - she noticed that I worked at a large tech company. She commented that she too had worked for a large tech company at one time - AOL. I smiled. She then immediately recounted the day she and her entire floor were laid off unceremoniously. Luckily, that was about the time that we reached her floor.

I too worked for AOL at one time, after they bought Netscape who happened to be my employer at the time. I very quickly took a severance option they were offering. There were also plenty of developers that fell under the iPlanet umbrella working for Sun/Netscape that later felt the axe. Don't think that everyone who worked at AOL were a bunch of "you've got mail!" chatroom admins.

otoh I don't think anyone who came to AOL that way would say "I worked for AOL". I'd say I worked for the part of AOL that used to be Netscape, or at least "AOL West". I seem to recall saying something like "I work for Sun but my paycheck comes from AOL, for tax reasons...".