We were probably in the Twilight Zone
By glazou on Sunday 22 May 2005, 04:18 - AOHell - Permalink
Ridiculous excerpt from this article:
" This year, (Jonathan) Miller (AOL's CEO) has introduced a series of new products, including a local search engine, a travel site, a free e-mail service and the first upgrade of AOL's Netscape browser in five years. "
The parenthesis and emphasis are mine. I still remember when Miller became AOL's CEO; his email message to all employees told us he was an happy AOL member since 1996 or something. And the whole crowd could not help but think "oh, that's the one!" 
Comments
Hmm, there was netscape.net free email service since, uh, a long time ago. And Netscape 6 came out in 2000, followed by updates every year since (sometimes several updates a year). And not to forget the 4.x series either, they were pushing minor updates of that as well on a continiuous basis.
And there probably would have been those other services released much earlier as well, except they axed the people who would have made them.
Miller c'est pas celui qui
1. a arrété l'aventure Netscape
2. empéché les créateurs de Winamp de faire du libre
3. est en train d'accélérer la fin de AOHELL
Bref, AOHELL a surtout le chic de racheter des sociétés, de couler les produits et d'agiter ses marques à tout va alors que le produit associé a perdu toute sa valeur, Netscape 8 est une horreur,a perdu son coté multiplateforme, il est complétement dépassé par Firefox (produit qui avait été proposé à AOL avant qu'il ne ferme Netscape, quelle ironie), et Winamp stagne et va probablement devenir une usine à gaz. C'est dommage pour Winamp, si des softs comme Amarok sortait sous win32, il serait complétement laminé.
Qui plus est, AIM perd du terrain face à MSN, et j'ai vu qu'AOHELL perdait des abonnés.
Au fait, pourquoi, on ne l'a pas viré ?
I perfectly remember "Alors, c'était lui !" moment.
I also remember that, at the time, AOL was considered as the "the Internet with training wheels". Staying with the training wheels for so long is probably symptomatic of someone *not* getting what the Internet is about.