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Pastimes : Kosovo -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: MNI who wrote (15723)	1/11/2000 11:27:00 AM
From: GUSTAVE JAEGER	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 17770

This AOL/TimeWarner merger is the most visionary merger ever! Did you hear how CNN founder Ted Turner welcomed the deal? I sure do understand his excitement.... Can we imagine a similar bold deal in Europe? I mean a newborn "dot.com" company --such as, say, French Infonie (spin-off of Infogrames)-- gobbling up a European media behemoth such as French Havas/Hachette or German Bertelsmann?? Not on your life! It's a clever move by TimeWarner's management though: they anticipated that they were losing grip on the eyeballs meter! In a couple of years from now, more and more people will rely on web-portals, customized e-forums, MP3 online jukeboxes and online video/radio-channels to get their daily entertainment/news diet. Hence the Trojan Horse ploy by TimeWarner to recoup their lost audience. Of course, on paper, AOL seems to have the edge on TimeWarner (ie 50%+ ownership and Case's chairmanship). However, practically, on the long haul I think the TimeWarner behemoth will shape the new company's culture. I also suspect that the AOL/TimeWarner merger will impact Microsoft's troubles with the Justice Dept. The Sun/Netscape merger showed how fast-changing the cybereconomy is and was actually a point in MSFT's favor. But now, the whole MSFT affair is dwarfed by the AOL/TimeWarner merger, the latter being a potential worldwide Big Brother in the media landscape. After all, it's one thing to go with a monopoly in the OS/browser business, but it's a whole'n other ball game to face a potential monopoly in the news/electronic media biz! Ironically, I'd label the AOL/TimeWarner merger as "the revenge of the broadcast paradigm": the clout of the new combo seems so powerful. Finally, it may also drop a hint about Microsoft's best exit strategy in its anti-trust litigation: HEY BILL! WHY DON'T YOU JUST SELL OUT MSFT TO YAHOO! ?? Regards, Gus.