America On-Line: will it survive ...? Message Board

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Technology Stocks : America On-Line: will it survive ...?

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To: Steve Robinett who wrote (6665)	1/6/1998 1:23:00 AM
From: Paul Houle	Read Replies (4) of 13594

It's not all about technology. Sorry, but this is too interesting a thread to stay away from. I will begin by saying I have been long on AOL for some time now. I am not in love with the stock, however, by any means. That is why I read the posts here. AOL's success has sprung from marketing and simplicity of use, and the subsequent critical mass produced. It adequately fulfills the need most people have when they get online -- to communicate. I agree that alternate providers may offer a more technically advanced or better performing means to utilize the online space -- there are other ways to chat, maintain live buddy lists, get stock quotes, etc. But AOL has aggregated (and sometimes pioneered) these services, in a way that people can actually make use of them. Until there is widespread source of and demand for high-bandwidth information, I don't see AOL crashing and burning solely due to it's reliance on a POTS-line network. A credible alternative must exist to what has made AOL attractive to the large number of subscribers it now has and continues to attract. And if this were easy, Microsoft would have done it.

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