Rich,
The biggest advantage a local ISP has is the internet connection itself. In order to access the internet through AOL you have to use AOL's very lousy lagged front end. As for AOL's online magazines and some of the other stuff, I can get most of that on the Web. You made a comment about web space for ftp or homepages, AOL does not provide that , unless you want to pay a lot of extra money. My ISP does give me 10 megs of disk space, and a good fast reliable Internet connection.
As for AOL's newsreader, they censor so you do not get all the newsgroups that are on the Internet , plus it does not compare to Free-Agent.
If the AOL content is what your looking for, then with the new rates
its a good deal , if you want to spend most of your time surfing the web than AOL is not a good choice.
But the main topic of this group is the lofty stock price of AOL.
Like I said in my previous message , I think you will see downgrades based on earnings. Whats good for AOL the subscriber is not good for the AOL investor. AOL can have 10 million subscribers, but if they continue spending the kind of money they do on advertising , and charge only $ 19.95 per subscriber , they wont make enough money to support a $ 25 stock price. Remember this stock has a P/E over 100 because all those Analysts were projecting big earnings momentum in the coming year. The only way AOL would have had a chance to show earnings momentum, was if they continued with that bullshit marketing expense accrual over 24 months while recognizing revenues immediately. AOl's profits were generated by fancy accounting , so now that they will be matching revenues and expenses in the correct way you will see that they wont show much of a profit margin.
Mark |
