More content news from yesterday. Post by Milplease on RB.
Wednesday, October 25, 2000
By Alec Klein,
Washington Post Staff Writer
America Online Inc. is scheduled to release the latest version of its software today, touting a makeover that adds features and expands the service's high-speed Internet offerings.
AOL 6.0 includes a built-in audio and video player and voice-recognition technology. It also offers more ways to connect to the service using broadband, or high-speed, Internet access, a key component of the Dulles-based company's pending marriage with Time Warner Inc.
"AOL has an image of convenience, being relevant to people's lives, being valuable and being easy to use, and what we are doing with AOL 6.0 is furthering the promise of all of those things," Jeff Kimball, executive director of the AOL service, said in an interview.
In the coming weeks, AOL will once again blitz the United States--where its flagship service now has about 20 million subscribers--with compact disks, a strategy that helped make AOL a household name. Several million disks will be available free in thousands of outlets of 50 retail chains, including Wal-Mart Stores Inc., company officials said. Users also will be able to download the new software from the World Wide Web.
Also today, rival Microsoft Corp. is scheduled to formally release its own new and improved Internet service, MSN Explorer.
Who planned its launch first? AOL insisted it worked on its own timetable, ignoring competitors. And so did Microsoft, the third-biggest Internet service provider, with about 3.3 million subscribers.
"You think that's coincidental? I don't think so," said analyst Rob Martin of Friedman, Billings, Ramsey & Co. in Arlington.
The AOL-Microsoft rivalry is not limited to product launches. Today, AOL is expected to ask the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia for permission to file a friend-of-the-court brief in support of the government's position in Microsoft's appeal of the antitrust lawsuit, people familiar with the matter said. An AOL spokesman declined to comment.
Chief among AOL 6.0 new features is a built-in media player that is automatically activated when users want to play music or video. In addition, the software gives subscribers the option of getting high-speed Internet access via satellite through a service called DirecPC. Both features could work hand in hand with Time Warner's enormous stable of entertainment content, which could include the downloading of digital music and streaming video.
But Jonathan Sacks, senior vice president and general manager of the AOL service, said these broadband features were not specifically aimed at the merger. "We knew nothing about the Time Warner merger when we started working on all this," he said. It was just a matter of looking to the future of the Internet, he said.
The new service builds on the company's "AOL Anywhere" strategy to make its service available to users from a variety of sources, including personal computers, Web-enabled cell phones and handheld devices. A new feature of 6.0 is AOL by Phone, which allows users to access their e-mail, stock quotes, weather and CNN reports from any telephone, using voice-recognition technology. Another new service, called AOL Speaks, lets users talk into their PC's microphone for e-mail and chat discussions.
The software also comes with the new AOL Shopping Assistant, which gives users price comparisons and buyers' ratings when they shop online.
Among the new features on 6.0's tool bar is an icon for Instant Messenger, the popular AOL service that allows its users, which include non-AOL subscribers, to exchange messages in real time over the Internet, and an icon for AOL Anywhere that takes users to a Web site to set up features to be accessed from mobile devices.
For all the new features, AOL's new software does not adjust one existing element that has stirred controversy. Like 5.0, the latest version gives users the option of setting AOL as their default Web browser. Some users and Internet service providers have filed suit against AOL, claiming that when they installed 5.0, the software changed the default settings and made it difficult to access an account with another Internet service provider.
FTC Deadline Extended AOL and Time Warner have delayed for an additional two weeks the deadline on reaching an agreement with the Federal Trade Commission on conditions to attach to their merger, sources said yesterday. The deadline had been Oct. 27, but the two sides are wrestling over the exact language of a guarantee that would give rivals access to Time Warner's cable system for high-speed Internet service.
Staff writer James V. Grimaldi contributed to this report. |
