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No One Willing To Pay Very Much For AOL
from the raise-your-prices dept
With all the rumors swirling around in the last few months about Google, Yahoo or Microsoft possibly buying AOL, we decided to purposely ignore the rumor that came out last night saying that Microsoft was close to a deal to team up for advertising. Until something is official, it's not really worth commenting on. However, what is worth commenting on is AOL's Richard Parsons' assertion that: "We are not interested in selling AOL." For those of you prone to taking execs like at their word, we figured we'd help out with our nifty translation service: Techdirt's "what they really mean." So, when Parsons says that "we are not interested in selling AOL," what he really means is "no one offered enough to us for AOL, and since it doesn't seem like anyone's going any higher yet (quick, bid now!) we may just have to do a partnership instead (unless you bid a lot more, quickly!)."
Reader Comments
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No One Wants AOL
Honestly, I myself wouldn't pay $10 bucks for AOL inc.
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Re: No One Wants AOL
id buy it for 10$, just to own it and strip all the ads out of aim and release it like that
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why
But why?
There's no money to be made without all the craptacular ads.
You'd be taking a huge loss.
You'd be better off inheriting AOL then opensourcing AIM. Whoever created AOL dies, you get AOL, you opensource AOL, Everyone wins.
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Re: why
Seems to me that if you could buy AOL for ten dollars, then you could pretty much do pretty much anything with it. Just downsize your staff, and bring in a couple of new subscribers, and your expenses are covered. You coul open source AIM, hell, open source every software asset they own (winamp, icq, etc). It would make no difference.
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No Subject Given
If you own AOL stock I'd suggest selling. Verizon's new $15 768k DSL is starting to steal customers. I know of a few AOL users who have already made the switch. As word of mouth travels it will only get worse for AOL. Unless you're a total technofool (like my Grandmother) switching to a service that is always on, doesn't need a second phone line, is $8/month cheaper, and about 13 times faster is a no brainer.
I might need to talk to my Grandmother again about putting effort into learning how to use a separate email and web client.
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No Subject Given
This whole AOL thing was like a game of chicken where MS/Google/Yahoo were trying to get one of the other guys to pony up some serious money for the company by pretending they were interested. It would probably benefit MS most by taking away some Google revenue and boosting their search service to more respectable numbers, but AOL's business is in decline anyway and will quickly become irrelevant no matter who they sell or partner with.
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