Technologizer

AOL Can Be Yours for a Cool $4.2 Billion

Wednesday, September 30, 2009

It’s a far cry from the $20 billion value that Google placed on AOL when it invested $1 billion for a five percent stake in the company in 2005. But $4.2 billion is what JP Morgan analyst Imran Khan now speculates the company is worth as Time Warner gets ready to spin the company off [...]

AOL Back On Its Own Again

Thursday, May 28, 2009

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When the original merger between Time Warner and AOL was announced in January 2000, it was heralded as a landmark merger between old and new media. Those rosy predictions never materialized, and as dialup faded away the company never recovered. Google’s five percent stake in the company will be bought back. From there, the company would [...]

A Brief History of AOL Annoyances

Wednesday, April 29, 2009

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One of the longest-running rumors in tech (it dates at least to 2003) is finally fact: Time Warner has told the SEC that it plans to spin off AOL, thereby undoing the gargantuan, famously disappointing merger that put an aging dial-up service, AIM, Marvin Martian, and Sports Illustrated under one corporate roof. By way of [...]

5Words for February 23rd, 2009

Monday, February 23, 2009

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Monday? Again? Here’s what’s newsy: AOL beefs up Bebo service. Microsoft wants severance money back. Ten iPhone Apps Apple Nixed Web radio: In trouble. Still. Sorry, no YouTube Oscar clips. Yahoo management shakeup imminent. Microsoft offers free tech training. Streaming-only Netflix coming. Eventually. That Last.fm RIAA story? Fiction. America: Tops in broadband. Really? J0bs misses Apple annual meeting.

Ballmer: Microsoft Would Still Do a Yahoo Search Deal

Wednesday, November 19, 2008

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At Microsoft’s annual shareholder’s meeting today, CEO Steve Ballmer has put the kibosh on speculation that the company will resurrect its bid to acquire Yahoo. However, Ballmer did suggest that a search deal was possible. Microsoft’s single-minded pursuit to acquire Yahoo never made much sense to me. Sure, it would obtain substantial search market shareover night, [...]

10 Ways to Avoid Emergency When Your Web Services Disappear on You

Thursday, October 30, 2008

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Venture capitalists telling the startups they invest in that the good times are over. Big companies hunkering down. Layoffs, layoffs everywhere. You’d have to be a wild-eyed optimist not to come to the conclusion that a lot of cool consumer Web services aren’t going to close their doors before the economy turns around. And you’d have [...]

If Yahoo and AOL Merge, Will Microsoft Reconsider?

Monday, October 6, 2008

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The latest reports across the blogosphere seem to indicate that acquisition talks between Yahoo and AOL are intensifying, and a deal could possibly come as soon as this month. Under the current proposals, it appears that Yahoo would purchase just about all of AOL save for its ISP business. That portion of the company would likely [...]

Abandoning Xdrive? Box.net Wants Your Data

Wednesday, August 13, 2008

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A few weeks ago, I blogged about the fact that AOL has decided to “sunset” its venerable Xdrive online storage service. Xdrive users, not surprisingly, seem to be figuring out exit strategies–and every day, my post gets read by folks who found it via Xdrive-related Google searches. Box.net, an Xdrive rival, dropped me a note to [...]

Google’s Gmail-a Culpa: Good, But…

Monday, August 11, 2008

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In my first post on today’s Gmail outage, I noted that Google’s official Gmail blog was mum on what was going on. I’m pleased to report that after Google had found and fixed the glitch, it used the Gmail blog to report that fact and apologize for the inconvenience. Google didn’t explain what happened, but [...]

A Brief History of Internet Outages

Monday, August 11, 2008

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Someday we’ll all tell our grandkids about what we were doing during the great Gmail outage of August 11th, 2008. Well, okay, probably not–Google’s e-mail service was down for only a couple of hours, which is relatively brief as Internet outages go. But when one of the world’s most popular mail systems goes missing even [...]

Gulp! I Shop at Barnes & Noble and Eat at Boston Market

Wednesday, August 6, 2008

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Here’s an insight: It’s never a great feeling to wake up to the possibility that an Estonian is running around with a homemade ATM card for your bank account. This and other news after the jump.

That’s Xdrive. As in “Ex-Drive.”

Friday, July 25, 2008

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So AOL is cutting back on a lot of its online properties, and one of the unlucky ones is Xdrive, the venerable online service whose current incarnation provides 5GB of free Internet storage space. We don’t know much about what’ll happen to the service other than what’s in an internal AOL memo that’s been published [...]