Just finished the aol.com book this past weekend. I think it's a must read for anybody who has an interest in AOL, whether you think the company sucks or is the next MSFT. A few weeks ago I quickly browsed through the 'inside microsoft' book by Edstrom and Eller, Barbarians led by Bill Gates: microsoft from the inside. Eller was the lead developer of MSN before he vested out. the passages in both books about MSN were quite telling as to why MSN is in such sorry state while AOL is running away.
I am eager to see what MSFT will do with their planned 'Start' portal. I am sure they learned a few lesson and will likely do it better this time around, but I kind of doubt as a software company they have the commitment and structure to morph into or come up with a Yahoo kind of thing. My feeling is, they are thinking: 1. crush netscape and take over the borwser market, 2. make lots of money out of the server stuffs like IIS, 3. drop a few million bucks on WebTV, carport, sidewalk, Start and see what happens.
A lot of things can still happen and blindside AOL, technology will change, market will change, but more than ten years' worth of survival records do show AOL knows this business better than perhaps any other player, and that's the main impression I got from the Swisher book.
BTW Sam, when will we see your inside AOL book?:-) |
