Results 1 to 10 of 10

Thread: AOL

  1. #1
    Senior Member
    Join Date
    Oct 2001
    Posts
    484

    AOL

    I found this while I was reading the newspaper today, so I went to the paper's site and decided to share it with everyone. If you want the full article, its here http://inq.philly.com/content/inquir...life/AOL06.htm at www.philly.com.


    Easy to use and impossible to ignore, America Online, the titan of Internet access, continues to pile on subscribers. The company announced last week that its membership had reached 32 million.

    Analysts say that number includes as many as 26.3 million subscribers in the United States - more than three times the membership of its closest rival, Microsoft Corp.'s MSN service, which has seven million U.S. subscribers.

    Put another way: Nearly one out of every four U.S. Internet users is an AOL customer....

    ....But AOL is frequently maligned as limited, low-brow, suspiciously effortless, the Internet for dummies....

    ...."I saw, someplace, a comparison: AOL is to the Internet as Readers Digest is to the Encyclopedia Britannica," said market consultant Bill Ablondi, head of MarketMaps L.L.C....

    ....Yet some say AOL is already too big.

    "If, in the next five years, there isn't an antitrust suit against AOL, [founder] Steve Case will have missed his dream," said Russ Neuman, a professor of media technology at the University of Michigan. He called AOL "the Standard Oil of Dulles, Va."

    Neuman's concern is the media empire created by this year's merger of AOL and Time Warner. Such media combinations are designed "to be so big that any new [entertainment] enterprise could not possibly succeed without you," he said....

    ....Rivals see it differently.

    MSN product manager Sarah Lefko said her service was effective in converting AOL members to its own side. "We continue to gain ground on them," she said. ". . . People really want to move up. Some people depict AOL as Internet access with training wheels. When they go to MSN, they can take a step up."

    Ablondi said Microsoft posed the most serious challenge to AOL, not least because Microsoft remains in control of the operating system on most PCs, and relentlessly pushes its own services. "Don't forget, Goliath is sitting up in Redmond, Wash., and coming on strong," he said.

    But other experts said MSN appeared unlikely to catch AOL anytime soon, in spite of its backing by the world's largest software company.

    "I would say there's really no competition there," said Randall Crum, a professor of technology at Southern Vermont College. "There have been a lot of [MSN] promotions with rebates for subscribers, but, as I see it, the Microsoft Network really isn't touching in any way the predominance of AOL"....

    AOL or Microsoft. The choice is yours.
    Why am I still here?

  2. #2
    Senior Member
    Join Date
    Oct 2001
    Posts
    872

    Post Decisions...

    Damn dude...that last bit sounded a wee-bit to scary:
    AOL or Microsoft. The choice is yours.
    Sheesh, the least you could do was sink it slowly in on us! But really though, it's funny to see the two worst ISP's (in my opinion...especially for dail-up users) at the top of the charts. It's like listning to 'gangsta-rap' on HFS radio station! Earthlink is a pretty good ISP, it's way better then AOL and Microsoft, plus Earthlink is a DSL provider, so it's all nice and fast . AT&T is also said to be a good ISP for dail-up users. I used to have that back in the day...seemed pretty good to me.
    ...This Space For Rent.

    -[WebCarnage]

  3. #3
    If M$ is the devil then that would definately make AOL the anti christ. I personaly hate AOL (even though I sometimes use the damn thing) and I don't use MSN out of principle.
    AOL is slow and cumbersome. Its interface is made for retarded monkeys and for the people who pay for this "service" its damn expensive.
    Oh well, enough rant about things I can't control.

    Peace out
    Those who are awake all live in the same world.
    Those who are asleep live in their own worlds. -Heraclitus

    All Your Base!

  4. #4
    Senior Member Ouroboros's Avatar
    Join Date
    Nov 2001
    Location
    Superior, WI USA
    Posts
    636

    Re: AOL

    Originally posted by Alcatraz
    MSN product manager Sarah Lefko said her service was effective in converting AOL members to its own side. "We continue to gain ground on them," she said. ". . . People really want to move up. Some people depict AOL as Internet access with training wheels. When they go to MSN, they can take a step up."
    I actually do use AOL (until I can get my wife to switch to a web-based e-mail system, anyway). I am a dial-up user, but an ISP is all that AOL is to me, no mail, etc... Usually when I want to browse for a while, I'll switch to Netscape.

    Anyways, the point is, some users think that they have to use their ISP's services, when they really don't.
    The whole competition thing is based on money, and I admit that it is too expensive (hence the trying to get out of it by making the wife stop using @aol.com). As far as dial-up goes, just use your local phone company...it's much cheaper, and if you're lucky, you can get an ADSL connection for the price of a clogged AOL connection.

    Ouroboros
    "entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem"

    "entities should not be multiplied beyond necessity."

    -Occam's Razor


  5. #5
    whoa.....talk bout irony huh. ask any real web user and deyll tell u dat dey hate aol and msn but der still at da top. personally i use aol i dont favor it in the least bit. my fren uses msn and it duznt get any better. im starting to think dat ppl r just signin up b/c "der frenz have it" or "its da kewl thing to do."

    i think dat u wud also have to turn to the media attention that each isp has. aol and msn tend to leave sumthin in ur mind wen u see da commercial.

    i think dat ppl tended to stick wit deez isps b/c it wuz da easy thing to do. msn comes wit windows and we can fill up the grand canyon wit da aol cds dat we get in da mail. in addition, ppl probably started out wit aol and msn because of its simplicity and ended gettin stuck wit it after dey got accustomed to it.

    another aspect iz dat msn is so hard to get rid of. mah fren cancelled his msn and der still buggin him bout it.

    its just ironic and satirical
    Life is just a series of decisions, each one can alter your future and you can possibly end your life at any moment. Do you really want to be under the care of the Microsoft Support Center?!?!

  6. #6
    Senior Member
    Join Date
    Oct 2001
    Posts
    689

    Post aol

    Let me tell you about aol back in 1995. They attempted to prevent their users from accessing the actual internet, by promoting businesses with sites on their personal servers that only aol users could access. They would only allow you to use the programs for accessing the internet that were provided with their package, including their inferior web browser. You could not connect to telnet, irc, usenet,or many of the other internet services using an aol connection. Forget about using netscape or the then inferior Internet Explorer. You could not access your old e-mail without being connected to the internet. They used to charge you by the minute for internet access meaning you could end up paying extremely high bills. Connecting to their servers was something that was near impossible in itself since the lines were always busy. A little while later the classic idle time limits were imposed so that you couldnt stay connected if you didnt use any of their services for five minutes. My brother and I had to take turns keeping the connection steady while downloading files. They had decent chat rooms on aol, but they were so congested, and limited to 30 users, that you could never get into the ones you liked. Then there were the skript kiddies hurting us using the now classic AOHell. After a month of this I moved to my first real ISP and found that the internet is actually 1000 times the size of aol. After 6 years aol realized that people want the whole internet, not just their little servers. They now offer the same things as all other ISP's but at a higher price for their "Special Content". If you are using aol, I feel for you, and I suggest that you look into a cheaper alternative.
    Wine maketh merry: but money answereth all things.
    --Ecclesiastes 10:19

  7. #7
    Man am I glad I live in the Uk and not the US - aol is no where near as popular here though we do get a LOT of those damn cds thru the mail, make good frisbies tho

    anyways check this on aol censorship - mildly amusing

  8. #8
    Senior Member
    Join Date
    Sep 2001
    Posts
    412
    I hate AOL with a passion, to me they embody everything the internet shouldn't be. One good case in point would be jabber, an open source project to allow all instant messaging applications to talk to each other - Aol keep modifying thier instant messenger so its not compatible with jabber clients - effectively trying to lock out anybody who isn't an aol user. I'd like to take that stupid aol adapter and shove it up steve cases' ass.

  9. #9
    Senior Member
    Join Date
    Nov 2001
    Posts
    257
    I've worked for AOL in the past, which is why I've still got an aol e-mail address if you were to check my profile (don't really want to give out my current business address to a potential group of hackers), but I would not ever, EVER, use their service.

    In my home I've got Road Runner cable service hosted by cox communications. The biggest farce of a cable company ever, though it's still the only high speed connection I can get in this area.

  10. #10
    Senior Member Ouroboros's Avatar
    Join Date
    Nov 2001
    Location
    Superior, WI USA
    Posts
    636

    Ted

    Originally posted by ThePreacher
    Let me tell you about aol back in 1995. They attempted to prevent their users from accessing the actual internet, by promoting businesses with sites on their personal servers that only aol users could access.
    Sounds like Opera and MSN...

    As a testimonial from an AOL user...**** AOL/Time Warner. Ted Turner can stick it up his ass.

    The countdown begins to a local ADSL connection for me (as soon as possible...damn wife and her "i like AOL, it's easy!" philosophy.)

    Anyways...
    "entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem"

    "entities should not be multiplied beyond necessity."

    -Occam's Razor


Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •