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| Tuesday, July 30, 2002 |
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The case against Case 
| | In fact, when you look at the intrinsic value of AOL, it's clear that the online division — once mighty, once so arrogant — actually subtracts from the value of the overall company, which reported encouraging net income of $394 million last week. |
| | "While the online advertising revenue recognition practices seem to have been aggressive, AOL online has been essentially afforded zero value by the markets,'' wrote Patricia Lee, an analyst with CreditSights, which analyzes companies for bondholders. ``And discounting further from zero is a difficult exercise." |
| | To be fair, Scott goes on to recommend buying AOL stock, because "...sooner or later, the adults will find a way out." |
| | Not if online readers don't like advertising and never will. Big problem there. |
| | AOL has never been a real software company, and their crown jewell app — AOL Instant Messenger — is a client-only lock-in that will be undermined totally once the Jabber protocol (or some other IM protocol) ubiquitizes into the same grade of Internet infrastructure as SMTP and POP3 provide for mail service and HTTP provides for Web service. |
| | AOL and Microsoft are both on dead-end courses with their instant messaging (IM) strategies as long as nobody else can use their protocols or communicate with the clients they won't let talk to anything other than their own kind. (Think about how anybody can look at any Web page with any browser, or exchange email using any mail software. Meanwhile, AOL and Microsoft IM clients still can't talk to each other — or anybody other than themselves — Apple's new iChat notwithstanding). |
| | So, what we have here are two "competitive" companies deeply stuck in 1983. (It's amazing that nobody in the mainstream press isn't calling them on it.) And since both companies' IM strategies are stuck equally far back in the past, either one has a terrific opportunity to obsolete the other's strategy in an instant. |
| | If AOL wants to undermine Microsoft's IM position while maintaining (or advancing) their own dominant one, they should either release their own IM protocol into the public domain, letting it become part of the Net's infrastructure — or adopt the Jabber protocol that's already flourishing there. Either strategy will have roughly the same strategic effect, and either would leave Microsoft high and dry, talking only to itself. (Of course, Microsoft could use the same strategy against AOL. In fact, I'm kinda surprised they haven't yet.) |
| | AOL could look at it this way: it's inevitable anyhow, so why not do it now? Or before Microsoft does? |
| | Here's one reason: Steve Case is the only guy in the entire combined company in a position to make it happen, but he's been kicked off his own case. So to speak. |
Say where?
| | And two out of the three congressmen sponsoring the bill have nothing about it on their sites. But the third, Jay Inslee, does. Good man. Now I can go finish my piece for Linux Journal on this whole thing. |
Put your hands on the car and spread your feet. Now wouldn't you rather be on a bullet train?
Wonder what the links in this post will do to my ranking...
The inside angle
| | Ruben's piece highlights the fascinating differences between making, covering and reading news. |
| | Whatever else happens, it's clear that these activists made a difference. Bravo to them. |
Affirmative Distraction
| | When somebody asked me to describe my own political leanings the other day, I replied "over." But the truth is more like another preposition: out. As in outward, going all directions at once. Kinda hard to pin down, but kinda like the Net itself. |
Whereware
| | I was looking yesterday for a way to read arcane geological map files of the Santa Barbara area, and readers came back to me with some of the most amazing stuff. |
| | Here are some of the clues they floated my way: |
| | News that the files I want are GIS (Geographical Information System), and require special readers. |
discuss
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