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Verizon to Buy AOL for $4.4B

wsj.com

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Re: Verizon to Buy AOL for $4.4B

#121

Post by ck2 »

With what I know about both companies, they are practically made for each other.

Verizon needs a gullible user base and anyone still using AOL basically is purely gullible.

BTW how does Verizon get away with breaking the law every single day: when they were licensed 700mhz by the US Government (on behalf of the US people) for LTE they were required to not restrict user devices on that band. Go try bringing your own non-verizon LTE device to verizon and see what they say (the answer is always no)

Re: Verizon to Buy AOL for $4.4B

#122

Post by dec0dedab0de »

sswaner wrote: post #38
baldfat wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cable I didn't know AOL had ever made it into cable. Or are you meaning dial up over telephone cable?

I think he is referring to Verizon. Now that they are part of the Verizon family AOL can get you online via, fiber, cable or dialup.

Actually, I didn't realize AOL and Time Warner split.

Re: Verizon to Buy AOL for $4.4B

#123

Post by allendoerfer »

pyvpx wrote: post #100
tw04 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

if so, then why should the pipes be privatized at all? in that case, the pipes should be built out and maintained at a governmental-level and leased back at a uniform/standardized price to all providers.

Because, you want the pipes to grow.

Re: Verizon to Buy AOL for $4.4B

#125

Post by plorkyeran »

ascagnel_ wrote: post #44
ams6110 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

4G is generally available in rural areas?

Yes; Verizon has an offering designed explicitly for rural areas[1], but it's expensive. The linked article is from 2012, and prices have since declined, but the general gist of the service is the same: a big antenna you bolt to your house or a tree and will pull from an existing account-level share plan (if you have one). [1] http://www.cnet.com/news/verizons-homefusion-now-brings-4g-l...

If Verizon is trying to expand their wireless offerings into areas where dial-up is currently the only option, then having much more direct marketing access to those dial-up users sounds pretty useful for them.

Re: Verizon to Buy AOL for $4.4B

#126

Post by plorkyeran »

raverbashing wrote: post #92
tat45 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to mention those people who live in areas still not serviced by any broadband providers. I know, insane, right? I thought everyone lived in cities too!

You can usually get an Edge/2G connection, which is probably faster than dial-up.

In practice it isn't signficantly. EDGE peaks at 384Kbps, but these days if EDGE is the only thing available you generally have a poor connection that gets you about half that before all the dropped packets that halve it again.

Re: Verizon to Buy AOL for $4.4B

#127

Post by stevewilhelm »

darklajid wrote: post #58

Today I learned that WhatsApp is 5 times more valuable than AOL - and I never understood either of these companies' market.. Interesting though - that company 'felt' like a giant when I seriously got into using the web and although the article seems to imply that the operations of AOL continue (using the AOL brand?) it's fascinating to see such a company being swallowed.

WhatsApp has about a quarter of a billion (with a 'B') users worldwide.

Re: Verizon to Buy AOL for $4.4B

#128

Post by bluedino »

r00fus wrote: post #87
georgeott wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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 days. Google, Amazon, eBay, Yahoo... AOL would have ran any of those into the ground had they purchased them, and buying ISP's like XO or Covad wouldn't have worked out well, or buying someone like Sun, Cisco, or SGI would also have been a disaster.

Re: Verizon to Buy AOL for $4.4B

#129

Post by bluedino »

r00fus wrote: post #87
georgeott wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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 days. Google, Amazon, eBay, Yahoo... AOL would have ran any of those into the ground had they purchased them, and buying ISP's like XO or Covad wouldn't have worked out well, or buying someone like Sun, Cisco, or SGI would also have been a disaster.

There truly was nothing they could have done.

Re: Verizon to Buy AOL for $4.4B

#130

Post by cpach »

HarryHirsch wrote: post #79
67726e wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No the commenter you're asking, but I've never had a constructive conversation with "those types" - the kind who go out of their way to talk about getting laid off from a tech company. Of all the ones I've spoken with, it followed the pattern of "BigCo outsourced jobs to those darn Foreigners, and I got laid off, and it will happen to you too!". In particular I worked with a former DBA for IBM at a grocery store in h…

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…

”Sometimes the country on the other side of the border is the enemy.”

What do you mean by that?

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