Harry,
Thanks for the MCI/YHOO partnership post.
As I've stated previously, the Internet will eventually fall into the hands of specialists like MCI and YHOO, not a generalist like AOL. The reason being, the generalist cannot hope to produce a sustainable profit margin, if any -- too many irons in the fire -- too much technical and/or pricing competition in each area of involvement.
I think AOL has been in its salad days, as they have been sitting in a transition between past "bulletin-board" oriented competition (CompuServe, MSN, et al), which basically withdrew for economic reasons (no money in it) once the Internet got going, and future "Internet-only" oriented competition, which has mostly been testing the waters, building a catalog of what works or might work and what doesn't, and setting up adequate infrastructure.
Of course, AOL will still go to $100 from here. :-D |
