4 ms·
This is a great article. Ok, I skipped the parts where he explain how computer works and the history of MS, but I loved how he goes from the internal working of
by aylons 11y ago
This is a great article. Ok, I skipped the parts where he explain how computer works and the history of MS, but I loved how he goes from the internal working of Messenger to the higher level problems in MS.
On the other side, does anyone have a good, encompassing explanation to why AOL was a such a systematic value destroyer? I always read about MS structural problems, but not AOL's.
Nullsoft (Winamp), Mirabilis (ICQ) and Netscape (Navigator) quickly come to mind, but I guess there's more, including their own ecosystem with keywords and promotional websites.
Fact is, after an AOL acquisition, everything stopped evolving. Maybe not Netscape, but it lagged behind, still. Anyone?
- thanksgiving 11y agoAll of these things acquisitions happened before the lackluster Randy Falco or the clearly malicious Tim Armstrong so we can count them out for the failure. As an outsider, I'd say the main problem is the lack of a clear identity. What is Aol? Is it an ISP that never upgraded beyond dial-up? Is it a communications company a la AIM and Aol email? Is it a news/media conglomerate a la Huffington Post and Patch? But I could be wrong.
- TheGRS 11y agoI had read an article on the fall of winamp once, I think it was this one by ars technica: http://arstechnica.com/business/2012/06/winamp-how-greatest-mp3-player-undid-itself/ http://arstechnica.com/business/2012/06/winamp-how-greatest-... It seems like in the case of winamp there was a mix of bad management decisions and what is now history (the rise of the iPod, web 2.0, and the fall of AOL's primary service).
- cardiffspaceman 11y agoCertainly, nothing became of TimeWarner.
- seanp2k2 11y agoDoes this not also happen with most acquisitions in general? Look at all the companies Google has bought; how many of them have the actually done something with which has turned into a profitable arm of the business?
- outside1234 11y agoGoogle buys a lot of companies for their bodies, not their products.
- burnte 11y agoSteve Case. He was out of his league with the meteoric rise of AOL and was simply at the helm of a ship being carried on the jet stream. Netscape brought on Jim Barksdale because Marc A wasn't fit to lead NS. Google brought on Schmidt for the same reason. AOL never brought anyone else in because Steve was a fully grown adult, so no one was willing to recognize his inexperience at running a company that size. I'm not saying he was dumb or bad or anything such as that, simply that he was out of his league when AOL managed to grow so large. Plus, right after the NS and TW acquisitions, the dot-com bubble burst, and smaller properties like winamp and ICQ were ignored while the company focused on righting itself after a $100bn write down.