|
|
 |
AOL’s Missed OpportunityJuly 11th, 2005 by Hans Bjordahl :: see related comic |
Speaking of “high level,” there’s an enduring mystery of business strategy in the ’90s that I remain curious about to this day, and maybe someone out there could provide the insight that clears it up for me.
Simply put: Why didn’t AOL “go upstream” in the heyday of the AOL service and include a simple operating system on those ubiquitous AOL CDs?
In retrospect, it seems so simple: AOL typically skewed to the novice user. Back in the mid to late ’90s, it was really the only viable choice when it came time to “connect Grandma to the Internet.” Often, that new user bought a computer for one reason and one reason only: “to be getting the AOL.”
Enter Microsoft. They see that AOL’s on to a good thing. Now MSN’s in the game. A battle for subscribers ensues. Had AOL added its own operating system to those CDs, it could have hit its primary competitor where it hurt, and owned the online computing experience — end to end — for all those users then, now and in the future. Wow.
But that didn’t happen, did it? AOL got caught up in a bruising merger with Time Warner, and then it was pretty much two years of executive bickering and backstabbing in the public arena. By the time the dust settled, broadband was here, and most headlines today that feature AOL include the word “struggling.”
Granted, there’s no such thing as a “simple” operating system, but a company with AOL’s resources could have made it happen. Is it just me, or did AOL let a tremendous opportunity pass them by?
Wow, that’s an interesting thought indeed. Nowadays we have Knoppix which is advanced stuff, but I also imagine AOL could have made a straightforward internet centric OS (including a wordproccesor and stuff)… what a missed opportunity indeed.
But it would have seem seriously overbearing to have to install a complete to OS to access the internet. You would have to provide other options as well…
How would you have expected this to work? Joe User get the CD and installs it on his existing PC. Does it wipe-out the previous OS? What about his data?
How if it CAME with a new PC, then Microsoft would have quickly put and end to that (w/ a monoploy blackmail).
The whole idea seems too much all the failed internet applicances of then and now.
AOL could have made alot if they had done this, but can you imageine the security vulnerabilites? Everyone hates AOL, it’s the one thing Windows users, Mac users and Linux users can all agree on.
If they would have had it for my Amiga (dodging thrown objects from Mac and PC bigots).
If Linux would have been ready 5 years earlier we migth have seen something like your proposed what-if. But the actuality it wasn’t and AOL could but help to drop the ball. Lets face it innovative and AOL have not been used in the same sentence for well over a decade.
In a round about way it would have made Miscrosoft maybe better by having real competition in an area they have had a near monopoly on (sorry Linux and Mac users, your user % is feeble no matter how cool your OS is).
AOL rocks. Those CDs I get in the mail bi-weekly make excellent coasters.
Actually at one time AOL actually did this. They used to deploy AOL (about the time of the windows 3.0 launch) with a little OS called GEOS. It ran on commodores and PC’s and probably atari ST’s. It was hyper efficient, for example the .exe for solitare on it was about 25k vs the bloatsize of windows solitaire.
I never understood with this tiny little os never took off.
Mike Weiss: Think Knoppix. It’s an OS, but it boots from the CD. There’s nothing to install, just put int the disk, reboot, and you’re online. Maybe AOL-OS uses your existing harddrive to store files, but there’s no reason it couldn’t speak FAT16/32 and thus not interfere with Windows.
But do you seriously want to know why AOL never did this? They are massively disorganized. Remember, this is the company that bought ICQ, the biggest instant messaging network at the time, and proceeded to do nothing to merge it with AOL IM. This is the company that bought Netscape for $4.2 billion…and disbanded it. Wake me up when AOL does *anything* interesting.
I’ll take Robby’s comments as the first step they missed, but assuming magic happened and they got their house in order the major problem with a new OS has always been-
Drivers.
If it doesn’t work on every off brand box thrown out by local computer shops buying the absolute cheapest components that can be found on the planet, then it’s not going to suceed. MS’s embedded position isn’t because of all of the applications it has - it’s because you can install Windows on just about any Wintel box made and at least limp along. It’s a huge barrier to entry.
OS does much much more than mere run a chat application. Even if that is all the reason for buying it for your Grandma, you still expect a lot. This is why AOL didn’t do it:
1. Linux wasn’t around, so they probably thought it would have been too much of a hassle to start from scratch.
2. Getting application base and driver support for the os is a full time job, and with Microsoft around, an extremely tough job. Moreover, that is not AOL’s core business so why take the pain.
In my opinion, Robby’s comment sums up what AOL really DID NOT do. Their acquisitions are like marrying a Ms. Universe beauty queen and use her to cook your food (I know, my comparison sucks as much as AOL’s later business strategies).
-Arshad Tanveer
http://atanveer.blogspot.com
A Toronto company named QNX sent out a bootable floppy disk with the OS _and_ a browser.
AOL could have done something like that. Interesting idea.
In a word? Support costs. If the OS fails, and it’s Windows, AOL might get a call but they can bounce it back. If it’s the AOL OS (and leave aside the development costs for a company that wants to use its developers for its own software), they have to support it. Printer drivers? Graphcis card drivers? Applications? It’s a whole second business, and a thankless one.
Bug Bash is a comic strip written and illustrated by Hans Bjordahl. Bug Bash is a comic strip about technology: managing technology, the business of technology. It's about project management and managing projects through the dull world of Rational Rose, use cases, and requirements. Functional requirements, user requirement, functional specifications, design specifications, call it what you want but it's still the bane of project managers. And when you're done with that, you can think about all the fun that comes with timelines, scheduling, estimates (PERT estimation anyone?) and resourcing until Gantt charts are coming out of your ears. Let's not forget the risk management in the software engineering life cycle. Maintaining the project is just as much fun, managing what was initially set out in requirements and trying to keep feature creep / scope creep in check with change management. If any of these words send nightmares to you, the project manager, then this site probably rings true with you. (Who Links Here?)