Uncle Frank,
First I'll answer your question how do "I" distinguish AOL from Yahoo. Because they provide online services. Yahoo does not. Portal amongst other things.
Second I best backtrack and quote you verbatim:
"I think Geoffrey would classify aol as a King, due to their market share in the isp/content provider sector."
I can't really quarrel with that. First you have correctly categorized them as a King. They have the Points of Presence (POPs) like crazy and always have had, even when they were strictly an online service. They have the Content, and boy do they have the subs. Advertisers and Merchants, too. And yes, some call them an ISP even.
"I", personally however have a problem thinking about them as an ISP. Distinctions between what was distinctly called an online service and an Internet Service Provider blur. AOL was always classified as an online service. Greg Alwang (PC Mag 4/20) states it this way "today's ISP's are more like yesterdays online services and vice versa.
Several years ago (1994/ 1995 ? early days of graphical browsers - 16 bit world - proprietary dialers) they started an Internet Service called GNN, (I was an original beta tester of both their browser and the service). It was not a commercial success. They shut it down and folded it into their online service. Eventually they embedded a modified version of IE 4.0 (somewhat bastardized) and allowed a TCP/IP connection, and they qualified as an ISP at least in some peoples minds. Not mine. Too many proprietary idiosyncrasies.
King:yes, I own stock: yes, I connect and use content: yes through a legitimate ISP. Can you (Uncle Frank) call them an ISP: Yup, absolutely.
Me, I call them an online service like they always have been. When I can connect to AOL direct using Win98 winsock.dll and DUN with IE5 or Netscape and get all AOL content and can use Outlook98 or Eudora Pro or some other SMIME compliant email package with AOL, then and only then will "I' refer to them as an ISP. I won't even talk about accessing them with a UNIX shell account.
I won't mention either the new and improved AOL 4 email client that has trouble with long file names and receiving multiple attachments (though it can now send them) nor wading through the spam, nor, ....
Surreal stock, though, is it not? Defies all logic. No sense doing DD. Just buy.
- Eric - |
