Business Week: January 10, 2000
Cover Story: The 25 Top Managers
On the Case at AOL
Under Chairman and CEO STEPHEN M. CASE, America Online Inc. has become the 800-pound gorilla of e-commerce. AOL has 22 million subscribers, up 30% from a year ago, and online merchants and advertisers are tripping over one another to reach them. No wonder AOL scores record-breaking profits quarter after quarter and the stock keeps churning ahead.
But that's not enough for Case, 41. A quiet strategic thinker, he spent the past year inking deals that extend AOL beyond the desktop, to TV screens, mobile phones, and handheld computers. Case invested $1.5 billion in Hughes Electronics Corp. to send AOL over satellite TV. Partnerships will put AOL on 3Com's Palm computing devices and Motorola's new smart phones. To beef up AOL's downloadable Web music, Case, a former singer for college rock bands, bought two digital music startups. He also just agreed to pay $1.1 billion for MapQuest.com, which provides maps online. And a venture with Eastman Kodak Co. lets AOL users more easily send photos via e-mail.
With so many deals in the air, it would be easy for Case to lose focus. And indeed, he still has to show that AOL can grow as fast overseas as it has in the U.S. Investors are convinced that Case is on track to make AOL a household necessity--even if it's not necessarily on a PC. |
