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At one time, AOL had a market cap of $200B https://www.cnbc.com/2019/08/15/how-aol-dominated-the-internet-of-the-90s-and-let-it-slip-away.html https://www.cnbc
by alberth 1y ago
At one time, AOL had a market cap of $200B
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/08/15/how-aol-dominated-the-internet-of-the-90s-and-let-it-slip-away.html https://www.cnbc.com/2019/08/15/how-aol-dominated-the-intern...
- bdcravens 1y agoWhen Verizon sold it and Yahoo, they were sold for less than 2% of their peak market cap https://www.axios.com/2021/05/04/verizon-aol-yahoo-valuations https://www.axios.com/2021/05/04/verizon-aol-yahoo-valuation...
- ec109685 1y agoThat is a silly comparison. The alibaba assets of Yahoo were carved out before it was sold to Verizon was worth $58.62B.
- ascagnel_ 1y agoI 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.".
- JustExAWS 1y agoAOL did exactly the right thing. They knew their stock was overvalued and did some shady accounting to prop their stock up until the acquisition and it immediately crashed. How could they “get into broadband”? They weren’t going to be able to create the last mile infrastructure. We see how that worked out for Google. https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2019/02/google-fiber-exits-louisville-after-shoddy-installs-left-exposed-wires-in-roads/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2019/02/googl...
- sgerenser 1y agoTime Warner Cable (now Spectrum) was literally one of the pioneers of cable broadband. It seems like the best way for AOL to “get into broadband” at the time might have been buying Time Warner.
- hakfoo 1y agoThey couldn't buy the last mile, but they could have gone for an infrastructure play. You buy your broadband from the local phone or cable company, and they give you an AOL email account, the default portal is aol.com, they nudge you towards the all-in-one AOL client, etc. The local cable companies don't have to figure out anything but being a dumb pipe, and they can get a revenue stream less coupled to selling overpriced dialup. (They did have a "bring your own connection" plan at some point, but it was probably an easier sell to include it as part of a $75/month DSL/cable subscription rather than as an independent line item. Maybe use their temporary dial-up riches to line up long-term rights to premium content. I suspect before YouTube took off, nobody knew the potential for online video, and they could have probably locked in contracts at very low prices.
- bsimpson 1y agoAt the turn of the millennium, they were valuable enough to buy Warner Bros.
- everfrustrated 1y agoWe'll probably be saying the same about a lot of AI companies as well....
- dylan604 1y agoat the end of the last tech bubble, Herman Miller chairs were available for cheap. wonder what the score from the ashes will come this round?
- mschild 1y agoHopefully some more chairs. Mine's running on 25 years now and it has at least 1 broken part which is expensive to fix.
- deepserket 1y agorack space i guess
- Anarch157a 1y agodirt cheap Nvidia GPUs, perhaps ?
- einsteinx2 1y agoLots and lots of powerful GPUs I would imagine.
- agoodusername63 1y agoI'd be super down for GPUs to be cheaper again.
- bongodongobob 1y agoAn rtx 3070 ti is like $300. If you want latest gen top of the line, that's never been cheap.
- theandrewbailey 1y ago