Eleven Years of Ambition and Failure At AOL

The history of AOL reads like that of the U.S. auto industry:

• Pick the easy money as fast as you can • Pick old-school corporate leadership and hope it'll work in a new, highly competitive world. • Don't worry about looking at the latest innovative directions - or seeking a CEO who can create new ones for your corporation.

There must be some technological/business assets left in AOL. What about finding some leadership that wants to be ahead of the next wave of digital communication?

Yeah, I'd agree that there's a lot of validity to the comparison.

Two business models that rested on laurels: never looking at the innovation strategies of Steve Jobs-type CEOs.

Justin Frankel actually technically worked for AOL (via Nullsoft) when he wrote Gnutella and WASTE. Probably the best things to come out of AOL (by proxy) in the last decade. (Not that they didn't try to stop it, either).

"2004: Embracing broadband"

This was about 7-8 years too late.

Wait... so you mean the company whose advertising slogan was "Welcome to the World Wide Wow" didn't succeed?

This story brought me much joy and happiness. Thank you very much for bringing it to my attention.