aol.com: How Steve Case Beat Bill Gates, Nailed the Netheads, and Made Millions in the War for the Web

Not goid

Still relevant today even though aol is old news on the startup/entrepreneur front. Tenacious guts and a story about survival - important for any business, at any time.Just wish there was a kindle version.

It is unusual for a business book, much less one on the high-tech industry, to start with an elegy, but this is precisely what happens ui Kara Swisher's absorbing account on the online service universe. The opening chapter is devoted to Bill Von Meister, a man whose failure paved the way for America Online's success. Given that is is rare for this sort of pioneer to be honored even in supposedly altruistic fields such as literature (who remembers the inventor of the sonnet?) the tribute the author, and AOL chief Steve Case himself, paid to Von Meister is certainly noteworthy. Fascinatingly, the humanity exemplified in this gesture also was pivotal in AOL's rise to the top, as its competitors could only focus on obvious money-making routes like using the Internet to sell goods whereas AOL concentrated on aiding human communication. As haas happens so often in the history of the Internet, the conventional wisdom was exposed as facile, as it no doubt will be in the future.! ! This book is highly recommended for its portrait of an innovative company.

Over the past several years, Steven Case has lead AOL into becoming the top onine service on the Internet. Along the way, he has faced and conquered business and personal challenges to become one of the wealthiest men in America. However, he remains a vague figure who has beaten such rivals as Prodigy, Compuserve and Microsoft, yet prefers to stay out of the spotlight. Kara Swisher's book gives the reader an insightful look on the idea that stared AOL, the struggles and financial disasters that faced Case and AOL during the late 80's and early 90's, and the overwhelming success and wealth that AOL would enjoy today. According to Swisher, AOL started out as a onine video game company called Control Video Corporation (CVC) during the early 1980's originated by a crafty entrepreneur named Bill Von Meister. Steven Case entered CVC shortly afterwards from a marketing job from Pizza Hut. It was Steve's brother, Dan, who had gotten him the job at CVC. Swisher protrays throughout the next couple of chapters how CVC would be in constant turmoil , both financially and with struggles in what direction the company should take. Quite fittingly, the company was often called "Out of Control Video" by investors and creditors who were always looking to collect debts from the company. After years of hardships, CVC officially changed its name to AOL in 1991 and successfully went public on the NASDAQ stock exchange. The fortunes and reputation of AOL instantly changed, as the company began to make profits. To boost their online service, AOL offered games, e-mail, chat, news, forums, travel, and other information at a time when there was no commercial Internet yet. Case and his executive team had entered into this market at the right time, for they did not even envision the Internet explosion that would soon follow. In order to grab customers, Case decided to give away his software on compact CD's for free in magazines, which was a daring and risky move, but turned out to be a move that made Case look like a genius. The free CD's made it easy and attractive for customers to sign up to the service, and AOL began to accumulate a huge number of members. As of 1998, AOL was making in excess of $1 billion dollars in revenues and attracted some 11 million members to its service. Throughout the growth of AOL, one person who always stood in the way was none other than Bill Gates. In short, Gates threatened Case with a "buy or bury" approach in 1993, but Case refused to give in. The biggest reason why Gates was trying to acquire AOL was the simple fact that Microsoft's ability to integrate its MSN software with the Windows 95 operating system would give Microsoft a huge advantage in the Internet industry. Credit should be given to Case for being able to hold his own against such a powerful rival in Gates and make AOL what it is today. Even with incredible growth and success that AOL enjoys at the moment, there are several problems that Swisher points out that can hinder AOL. First of all, AOL has a history of stretching themselves to the limit and taking risky maneuvers. Secondly, the accounting practices used by AOL have always been in question, as the financial statments state more revenues and asets that the company may not be actually making. In addition,the many breakdowns in service due to not enough capacity have aggravated many people, and have hurt Case's reputation as well. Moreover, the boom of free internet service sights such as yahoo! pose the question as to whether customers will continue to pay for AOL when they can get free service from other sites. Overall, Kara Swisher gives an enjoyable overview on the creation of the online service community to what it is today and how AOL rose to the top because of shrewd marketing and bold decision making. Anybody who is interested in the Internet and the companies that have made it successful would find this book to be quite interesting and enjoyable.

It's impossible to describe the feeling I received whilereading AOL.Com. Here was the company I put so much of my heart andsoul into exposed completely for the world to see. The author makes it possible for her readers to sit back and observe the creation of a phenomenon the world now calls AOL. It's as if the reader is really there. The authors ability to provide such vivid personalities of Steve Case and other executives amazed me. She unravels a tale which should leave readers spell bound regardless of their previous familiarity with AOL. By far my favorite reference in the book is where the author describes Marc Seriff as "a young programmer" and continues to describe him as "only 33 years old". While I'm sure Marc, enjoyed this reference also I was disappointed they didn't provide more background on my own mentor. A book called AOL.COM deserves at least a chapter on how Marc led and inspired the technology development at AOL. I would have also enjoyed reading more about the time I worked internally at Quantum/AOL. The 5+ years I spent in Virginia was condensed down to about 20 pages. It makes my contributions seem small when I look at the big picture. It's probably just as well since one of my best ideas at the time, the proprietary FDO(Form Definition Opcodes), is now considered a technical albatross. As a devoted AOL'er I really enjoyed reading so many of the inside details of executive level dealing with the likes of Microsoft, CompuServe and others. The reaction of investors over the years was particularly enjoyable to me. For many years I've debated with industry insiders who proclaimed AOL to be dead. I could never fully convince them of the basic principles behind AOL's continued success. After all, if everyone understood they'd be successful too. Finally, AOL.COM explains to it's readers how Steve's determination for member friendly mass appeal along with it's focus on community made for the ideal consumer service. I applaud the auth! or for her fairness, honesty and ability to get the full story from the folks she interviewed. I also applaud the board of directors at AOL who allowed Steve to have the control over his vision. And finally, I applaud Steve for not selling out early and believing so much in the form of communications many of us knew would have it's day. The best is yet to come.