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Strategies & Market Trends : Bowling Alleys and Tornadoes: G&K Hunting Grounds -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: HeyRainier who wrote (62)	7/27/1999 12:29:00 AM
From: Mike Buckley	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 153

What's so interesting about this is how it displays the advantages one has when you are the Gorilla of one particular market niche, such as AOL's hold on the Instant Messaging market, the true "killer app" of the internet. Rainier, I understand your point, or at least I think I do, but I don't see it nearly so strongly as you do. My thinking is that AOL isn't a gorilla in the instant messaging market; there is no gorilla in that market. Don't forget that AOL's ICQ business that they acquired is a free instant messaging service. AOL still hasn't figured out a way for ICQ to make any money despite its millions of users. Instead of having a hold on the instant messaging market, AOL has a hold on its proprietary graphical user interface (GUI). It's a platform that allows them to decide who uses it and who doesn't. AOL is kind of like a plumbing company that decides who gets to send water through their pipes and who doesn't. (Okay, so there are probably better analogies, but you get the point.) Moreover, I'm not sure AOL's strategy will work. There are 16 million AOL users that might prefer to get instant messages from their friends and associates who don't use AOL's instant messaging. I can see AOL getting a lot of bad press about this, mostly because of creating customer ill will. That's not to say that gorillas haven't created ill will in the past, Softie and Intel being examples. But both those companies are stronger gorillas than AOL will ever be, even if you accept (as I don't) that AOL is a gorilla at all. Just my opinion. :) --Mike Buckley