Can AOL be fixed? Time Warner now operates AOL

Sumac- Okey dokey- Both Done!

AOL
SUMAC, without being too hateful, I would ask "why would anyone WANT to fix AOL.

Why not let it die in peace? It is a terrible Internet Service Provider, except for those folks who do NOT wish to think for themselves but just want to push a button and have someone else do their thinking for them.

If there is anything that Americans treasure it is FREEDOM which is the one thing you do NOT get with AOL.

In the first place it is a proprietary outfit that has its OWN browser, its own search engine, its own rules as to what its subscribers may or may not see and on top of that it is MOST incompatible with other browsers and other operating systems.

Years ago AOL was so slow that a few thousand subscribers took it to court to recover lost business due to AOL's poor performance.

The subsribers WON by the way, and I think it was was $350 million.

So how did AOL recover their loss? Easy, they just raised their rate from $19.95 to $21.95 so they got $2 a month from 12 million subscribers and that extra $25 soon recovered thier loss.

Steve Case, the founder begin with selling stock at $9 a share. Each year he got a handsome stock bonus and when the stock went to $50 a share
he bought Time Warner with some of this funny money.

Of course it lost $50 million last year and the stock is down to $12

And Steve Case? He quit the company and is now living in luxury
having sold lots of his stock options when the price was high.

Poor old Ted Turner got stuck with this deal. Luckily he is so rich it will not bother him too much.

AOL was clever in inventing the "keyword" system which were simply shortcuts for the website anyone could have accessed by typing it in
but were either too busy, too unfamilar or just didn't care.

MOST locations in the country offer a dependable ISP for $10 a month but if someone wants to spend $22 on AOL it is their right to throw their money away anywhere they wish.

the solution
maybe bombing IRAQ should solve this

Welcome to A2K, chinaman.

Maybe bombing another country would help. It could drive AOL/Time Warner stock down even further and they might have to file for bankruptcy. AOL dial-up is still as unstable as it ever was -- I used it for a couple of weeks when I was between high speed services. I now have Earthlink high speed but it is serviced by my local Time Warner cable.

AOL/Time Warner should be happy they inherited the LOTR trilogy, apparantly the only thing that is making any money for them.

It is disconcerting that people would want to pay a monthly charge for programs that they can download for free are already have in the software loaded in when they buy a computer. They do have slightly better computer graphic designers than Microsoft.