Funny that WhatsApp is somehow WAY more valuable than AOL is. I feel old.
Whatsapp is worth 19B to Facebook, not to the rest of the industry.
Verizon to Buy AOL for $4.4B
171–180 of 239 posts
Re: Verizon to Buy AOL for $4.4B
#172Earlier quoted context omitted.
Because, you want the pipes to grow.
I wonder if that really matters all that much. It could be my limited perspective talking, but fiber seems pretty future-proof. Nothing is faster than light; the only conceivable improvement would be cables that can handle wider spectrum of light. (The nodes on the other hand, of course, are continually improving) Ethernet cable is a similar story. NICs have advanced tremendously, but Cat5 (defined in 1991) is still…
Fiber is future proof but most people don't have it. The process of getting it is called growth. If it's the case that making the "pipes" a public utility would have hindered growth, then you would never have got fiber.
And 100M ethernet over Cat5e is pretty useless. Standard WiFi these days is 150-300 Mbps. I regret not running Cat6 in to my extension just to be safe.
Re: Verizon to Buy AOL for $4.4B
#173Surprised we aren't seeing the Gov jump in with Antitrust laws. Verizon can't have 4G AND dialup! Just not fair
Re: Verizon to Buy AOL for $4.4B
#174Why
Re: Verizon to Buy AOL for $4.4B
#175Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've paid for WhatsApp and am in the US. Yes, I originally joined to chat with people overseas, but now it's also the sole messaging service I use with multiple US-based contacts. AMA I guess, since apparently fellow Americans don't understand WhatsApp.
Ya I never really used WhatsApp but I do use Telegram for my friends (US). Why Telegram over WhatsApp or Kik or whatever? Desktop client, it is nice to be able to reply without pulling out my phone at work.
Well, there's Whatsapp Web, but it oddly requires you keep your phone connected.
Re: Verizon to Buy AOL for $4.4B
#176While 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…
The way to do it is to create an essentially non-profit organiation with a very limited charter, which is to provide internet infrastructure only. Then we and huge companies all invest in it (it would still charge for access). It would cost billions of dollars but it would pay off in the long run. So it would be profitable, but it wouldn't be like a company that has to maximize shareholder value and can expand into any business activity.
Because of the charter, it could never be used in a way that is not "net neutral."
Or, you know, we could get a bunch of guys with guns to MAKE us do things according to the demands of special interest groups... and see how that turns out...
Re: Verizon to Buy AOL for $4.4B
#177Earlier quoted context omitted.
> probably lower skilled workers can take your job, you probably suck More probably these decisions are made at a very high level and the individual abilities of these workers aren't even taken into consideration. The real lessons here are never trust your employer, loyalty is a two-way street and always have an exit plan.
I suppose, but to turn around and complain about how you haven't been able to find work for the past 5-10 years seems to indicate there might be something beyond "I got laid off because of outsourcing."
That something is usually "my skillset became overly specific to my employer, so that once I was laid off, I had nothing of value to anyone else." There's a lesson in that too: even people who were quite talented and hungry in their younger years can find themselves pigeonholed into a corner when they tie their fate to a single big company.
Re: Verizon to Buy AOL for $4.4B
#178Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sorry, but why do you believe WhatsApp is overvalued? They have an incredible mindshare, it is the only app (besides Facebook), that I see moms and grandmas using on a daily basis. Heck, my mom talk to me mostly through it. She evens send me emoticons, pictures and voice notes!
Because on average they only make about $0.05 per user per year [1]. I think they will struggle to grow that figure because messaging apps have very little lock-in. My friend John doesn't want to pay $1 to get WhatsApp? No problem - we can just use Telegram instead. [1] http://techcrunch.com/2014/10/28/whatsapp-revenue/
According to those numbers each WhatsApp user was only worth $4.66 to Facebook. That means WhatsApp needs to add 3.3 billion users to be worth the extra $15 billion.
Re: Verizon to Buy AOL for $4.4B
#179Earlier 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. 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.
They did buy twc...
Re: Verizon to Buy AOL for $4.4B
#180Earlier 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.
Yes. This. It's a reoccurring battle that all companies that build some kind of infrastructure and offer content/data services on that infrastructure end up facing.
When they built the pipes, there was no data/content, so they had to create it. But now there is so much more content/data that is so much better, and people just want to use these companies as a dumb pipe to get to the good stuff.
We see it now with cell phone carriers and cable TV companies who built infrastructure to transmit data, and also wanted to sell you content/data for that infrastructure. Hence phones from a decade ago full of bloatware and crappy ringtone stores and crappy Brew-based "app" stores, and cable providers who (still) have poor DVR interfaces and pay-per-view and TV packages.
The iPhone's most powerful innovation wasn't a touchscreen computer in your pocket. It was the business relationship with the cell phone carrier Cingular (and then AT&T). It was wedge that freed the device so people could control it (relatively) more, and allowed people to treat the network as a dumb pipe. Its still early, but Netflix, Youtube, Hulu, etc are largely doing the same thing to cable TV.
This goes back further than AOL. You can see it with AT&T, their refusal to allow 3rd party equipment on the POTS network, the rise of Sprint using their infrastructure, and their ultimate breakup.
Every time this battle has happened the infrastructure companies lose and get pushed into "dumb pipe."