MS-AOL

There's a link on Slashdot to articles on The NY Post and CNN/Money sites that say Time-Warner and Microsoft have discussed the possibility of selling AOL to the software megagiant. If this happens, and if the U.S. government allows it, that'll mean it's time to give up and move to Canada, Mexico, Europe, Pakistan, China, Afghanistan, or some other place where things make at least a little sense.

There's a certain irony in the phrasing of this potential deal, because it was actually AOL that bought Time-Warner back in the stock bubble days, but reality has reasserted itself and the company's execs now consider Time-Warner the "main" company, and AOL a mere division of it.

Nonetheless, AOL is still huge. They are by far the single largest internet access provider in the U.S. They are pretty much the Microsoft of the ISP industry, not quite to the extent that they can unilaterally dictate standards and platforms to other companies, but due to their sheer size and resources, they are a definite threat to every small-to-medium-sized ISP out there.

Next largest ISP after AOL is Microsoft. This is one major segment of the technology industry where MS is still stuck in second place. They have never been averse to buying market share, such as when they bought the leading internet-appliance (WebTV) and web-based e-mail (Hotmail) companies, or when they tried to buy Intuit (of QuickBooks fame). What's remarkable is that the U.S. Dept of Justices anti-trust division lets them.

AOL has never been a particularly ethical company, and they've gotten worse as they've gotten bigger. About the only reason I've been glad to see them around is that they were an obstacle to Microsoft's further domination of another segment of the industry. For example, MS had to pay some heed to internet standards for e-mail to remain compatible with AOL. With over 1/3 of home internet subscribers using MS-AOL software, they'd be able to set their own standards more easily, forcing everyone else to follow along. Competition in instant messaging would be squelched with the users of AIM and MSN Messenger rolled together into one group.

Incidentally, AOL would finally be able to complete kill the browser it undercut back in the late 1990's: Netscape. AOL bought out Netscape (a company crippled by its inability to recoup the development costs for its browser, because MS was giving theirs away for free), but their interest in the software itself has waned. They released the source code for Netscape to the public some years ago (where it now thrives as Mozilla) and reportedly the current version (Netscape 7.1) was already going to be the last. The purchase of AOL by Microsoft would ensure that.

I can only hope that the symbolism of MS engulfing Netscape will help show the courts how Microsoft has shat upon the consent decree that ended the suit over their illegal tactics to kill Netscape. If not, they're just fucking useless.