AOL tries to navigate the Web it helped you find
ON ITS OWN ONCE AGAIN
Pioneering Internet firm now focuses on content
By Michael S. Rosenwald
Wednesday, December 9, 2009
Before it was AOL, it was America Online, and before it was America Online it was Quantum Computer Services, and before that it was Control Video Corp., selling online services for the Atari. Remember the Atari? Pac-Man? In Internet time, that was basically 10,000 years ago. Compared with the Googles and Yahoos of the world, AOL's business of offering a gateway to online tools such as e-mail and instant messaging feels just as dated as Atari. Now, after a disastrous $164 billion merger with Time Warner nine years ago, AOL is being spun off Wednesday into its own company, and the new executives running the firm -- the head honcho comes from Google -- are once and for all breaking free from the we'll-hold-your-hand model to get online, instead creating content that users can surf to on their own. The new AOL publishes sites on gadgets, sports, politics and Tiger Woods's sex life (via TMZ.com). How AOL wound up at this point, an online trendsetter turned content publisher, is a story of innovative snipers that dates to the summer of 1996. It was a critical moment in the Dulles company's history. With telephone firms offering on-ramps to the Internet so users could choose their own travels, AOL executives doubled down on their strategy of a go-through-us portal to send e-mail, chat with buddies and search for recipes. But a digital war was brewing. In California, two young entrepreneurs were quietly working on a plan that would, in hindsight, help blow up AOL's model. Why not take e-mail, then and still the most popular online task, out of portals such as AOL and put it on the Internet to be accessed anywhere via a Web browser? Venture capitalists bit, and on July 4 -- Independence Day for the country and for e-mail -- Hotmail launched. "We didn't find it that hard to out-innovate AOL," Jack Smith, a co-founder of Hotmail, said recently. "With Hotmail, you didn't have to install anything and you didn't have to dial in to a particular service to get your e-mail. It made perfect sense to us." AOL's role in mainstreaming many functions of the Internet is undisputed -- instant messaging, chat boards, keyword searches, social networks and especially e-mail. The firm's role in shaping e-mail use was even canonized in a Meg Ryan-Tom Hanks movie called "You've Got Mail," a title that echoed what AOL users heard when e-mail arrived. But for AOL, being a first mover in a rapidly changing market proved just as dangerous in the new online world as it always was in the offline world. Being first paints a target on your back, and if you aren't careful, other innovators can out-think you. Entrepreneurs like Smith took what AOL had popularized and moved it out of AOL's expensive walled garden, for…

  Google Hits China's 'Great Firewall'Google search sites in China suddenly stopped working on Tuesday, and the U.S. Internet giant, after initially taking the blame for the problem, reversed itself and said China was blocking users' searches with its "Great Firewall."Read Article     

 Google hits back at WSJ's 'internet vampire' claims By Nick Clark
   Google has vowed to heal the rift with newspaper publishers facing up to the digital age, rejecting claims that it is an "internet vampire". The internet search portal's comments came after Les Hinton, the chief executive of The Wall Street Journal, last week criticised Google for "sucking the blood" out of the newspaper business. Josh Cohen, a senior manager at Google News, rejected the claim, saying: "We see our relationships with newspapers as strong partnerships where we both bring something to the table. We bring a lot of value to publishers." Mr Hinton's boss, Rupert Murdoch, and Dean Singleton, chairman of the news agency Associated Press have also attacked online news services for "misappropriating" content. Google has access to more than 25,000 sources of published news around the world; via its Google News it directs almost a billion clicks to news websites every month. "That's not insignificant," Mr Cohen added. "We obviously derive value from publishers. We also bring value to them." However it was Mr Cohen who announced, in a blog post back in February, that Google would sell advertising alongside its news searches in the US. The move proved controversial as the revenues are not shared with the publishers. Google's chief executive Eric Schmidt, left, also criticised newspapers earlier this year, saying: "The majority of newspaper content should be online rather than printed." After taking legal action, the French news agency Agence France-Presse agreed a licensing deal with Google in 2007. Other groups this year came out against the internet site. Mr Cohen said: "I can understand why publishers want to roll the clock back 10 years, maybe even five years, to where the business model was very different. You could take Google completely out of the equation and it does not change those forces that have happened. The best chance for news comes with the opportunity to reach millions of users at zero cost of distribution."     

  High Court Revives
Suit Against NFLThe Supreme Court denied the NFL its long-sought goal of broad protection from antitrust suits, ruling that the league can be considered 32 separate teams, in a case involving a licensing deal with Reebok.Read Article  

From Times Online December 25, 2008Nobel-winning playwright Harold Pinter dies (The Times)Harold Pinter was awarded the Nobel Prize in 2005 Patrick Foster, Media Correspondent
Harold Pinter, universally acclaimed as one of the greatest British playwrights of his generation, has died. The Nobel Prize winner lost his battle with cancer yesterday, his agent confirmed. He was 78. Pinter, who also enjoyed success as a screenwriter for film and television, was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2005, being hailed by the awarding committee as "the foremost representative of British drama in the second half of the 20th century". However he was too frail to travel to the ceremony, having been diagnosed with cancer of the oesophagus in 2002. Related Links Times obituary: Harold Pinter Pinter: not just a playwright, but an adjective too Early works show Pinter in time of verbosity Multimedia Harold Pinter Pinter was due to pick up an honorary degree earlier this month from the Central School of Speech and Drama in London, but forced to withdraw from the event due to illness. Pinter's classics, including The Caretaker, The Homecoming, The Servant and Betrayal, have influenced a generation of British dramatists and introduced a new word to the English language – Pinteresque – to convey an atmospheric silence. He was awarded a CBE at the age of 36, and was made a Companion of Honour in 2002. Born in Hackney, East London, the son of a Jewish tailor, Pinter threw himself into acting from an early age. In the mid-1950s he began to write for the stage and The Room was published in 1957. A year later his first full length play, The Birthday Party, was produced in the West End but closed after just one week to disastrous reviews. It was his second full-length play, The Caretaker, with which Pinter secured his reputation as one of the country’s foremost dramatists and playwrights. He has long been known as politically minded, having refused to do national service in 1948 and turned down John Major’s offer of a knighthood Most recently he had campaigned against the occupation of Iraq, being awarded the Wilfred Owen award for poetry in 2004, for a collection of work criticising the war. Tony Benn said Pinter would be greatly missed. The former Labour MP said: “Harold Pinter was a great playwright and a great figure on the political scene. “His death will leave a huge gap that will be felt by the whole political spectrum.” He was married twice, and is survived by his second wife, the writer and historian Lady Antonia Fraser. "He was a great, and it was a privilege to live with him for over 33 years. He will never be forgotten," Baroness Fraser told The Guardian today. Alan Yentob, the BBC Creative Director, said: “He was a unique figure in British theatre. He has dominated the theatre scene since the 1950s.” Pinter: life and words Born: October 10, 1930, East London.…