AOL seems to be in a long, downward spiral.
AOL, a unit of media conglomerate Time Warner Inc., has lost millions of subscribers to lower-cost rivals and higher-speed cable and telephone Internet services over the past few years.
In order to meet double-digit profit growth goals, AOL has trimmed its network costs over the past two years in the face of no revenue growth. The source said most of the job cuts would be made at AOL?s Dulles, Virginia, headquarters. About 5,000 of AOL?s 13,000 U.S. employees are based at Dulles. AOL cut 850 jobs in 2003.
While they can cut service further to keep the margins up, that can only work so long. AOL’s selling point has always been a relatively inexpensive and user-friendly online experience. But various factors seem to me to be working against them, in the long run:
- Plenty of much-lower-cost ISPs out there.
- Dial-up just ain’t cutting it any longer. Sure, you can get AOL for broadband, but it’s an added cost (see above).
- The population is getting more Net-savvy, making AOL’s hand-holding a lot less necessary.
- Plenty of portals out there, making AOL’s portal a lot less unique of a product.
So folks don’t need the user-friendly part, don’t need the cost, and don’t want the slow access. AOL doesn’t have all that much more to offer, except ways to frell up your PC. The synergy between AOL and the rest of Time Warner never really materialized, and seems unlikely to now. Unless AOL’s execs can think of something extremely clever to do (beyond sending out a zillion more install CDs), I’d expect to see AOL spun off within the next year or two, and extinct within a few years after that.
(via Les)
But without AOL e-mail addresses, whom will the l337 h4xxors taunt?
Another reason–and the reason we broke with them (heck, I was a customer when it was a Mac-only dialup service!!!!) is the way they constantly “enhance” the program. Which means you download more useless c*** that you never use and use more RAM when the stupid program runs. It got to the point where I couldn’t “multi-task” (which at home meant running things like music while I was online) anymore.
That and RealAudio. I have a perfectly good (free) music player, thanks. But since AOL and Real have a deal, every time I got online I was asked “AOL will need to install the media player in order to play the content you have chosen. Install?” Errrr…I wasn’t trying to play content, I was trying to get online. After multi-thousand questions, when a cheaper (dialup) service presented itself, adios AOL.
Cable/DSL: I’d love it. As soon as I get a Real Job, I’ll get it. Until then, I’ll live with dialup.
Providing tech support for a machine with AOL infiltrated assimilated installed can be nightmarish. I had them at one point (on a Mac as well), and eventually had to change when their answer all the time to my frequent problems was, “Reinstall the whole thing. Again. And, yes, that means losing all your settings and mail. Just do it.”
I was a “Chater Member” of AOL. I seem to recall the cost was advertised as $4.95 for life! Then the price sterted creeping up and up and up. I was pissed off, but there weren’t many other options at the time, and AOL was superior to Genie, and CompuServe, so I stayed with AOL. When I went back to school and got free dial-up through the university, I cancelled my AOL service and never looked back. AOL was cool in 1986, but I think it’s now suffering from (a) bloat, (b) failure to recognize who their target audience is, and (c)much stiffer competition.
Earthlink, who I use now, has recognized that there are two kinds of customers. They provide an AOL-like software package that gets anyone online regardless of their level of technical savvy, and they also provide a pure dial-in service for those who want an IP connection and access to mail, web, and news servers. So far as I know, AOL still treates all its customers like they are newbies.