EssayBoard

When AOL and Time Warner merged together, everyone thought it was the best idea ever!  After many years of failing to make any major footprint in the industry, suddenly AOL Time Warner was a joke to the industry which led to the spin-off where Time Warner re-established its presence fully in the last month of 2009 — a status of which it had before the merger.  10 years later, the two former CEOs of both companies are reunited on CNBC to speak about their thoughts on what so called “the worst merger of the century.”  The program was aired on January of 2010, and both CEOs were nice to each other enough and opened about what went wrong with the merged company.  The former CEO and co-founder of AOL, Steve Case, also commented on Twitter and Facebook!

The merger of AOL and Time Warner was executed poorly and the clash of cultures which had created a toxic environment where internal politics had overdriven to a point that there was little left of energy to invest into innovation; with hindsight, the merged company faced tough competition with an Internet economy that was bursted, and yet all that while the merged company failed to innovate which led to its downfall/spin-off.  The idea of forming AOL and Time Warner had merit and probably is still very true today!  Take a look around you today, you can see AT&T has U-verse and Verizon has FiOS — these two companies’ new services are very similar to what AOL and Time Warner had in mind!  Why?  U-verse and FiOS both offer TV over IP.  Although customers don’t care what formats their televisions run on as long they can see their pictures fine, and that’s exactly the point!  With careful messages, these companies promote newer entertainment platforms with phrases such as smart TV.  It’s true though that customers are able to do more with smart TV such as be more interactive with TV shows.  Recording TV programs for later viewing is one of those interactive features that make newer entertainment platforms attractive.

With hindsight, Gerald Levin and Steve Case failed to manage their merged company correctly, therefore they failed to develop what could have been an entertainment format 10 years ahead of its time.  Nowadays, phone companies such as AT&T and wireless companies such as Verizon are doing just that and even more.  What is more?  Besides TV over IP, these companies are offering Voice over IP (phone over IP format).  Voice over IP isn’t new, because Vonage has been offering that for years.  Unfortunately for Vonage, they have been failing to convince everyone to forgo the traditional phone companies such AT&T fast enough, therefore such companies are catching up  with time and technology to put major hurt on Vonage.

Back to the topic, Gerald Levin and Steve Case were ahead of time, but they failed to execute their great vision.  With this in mind, we may see the entertainment platforms that we have been accustomed to — change rapidly as the industry moves forward.  The technology is smarter, therefore customers are more likely to enjoy the newer entertainment platforms than the previous ones.  For an example, TV over IP allows you to be more interactive than otherwise, because it’s easier to do just that with the current technology.

With all the talk of the past and the now, let not forget the future!  Google and Intel are teaming up to create something they call Smart TV.  Google is planning to bring its Android Operating System closer to TV, and in a way it can contagiously spread its advertising influence onto the TV market.  Is this different from TV over IP?  It sounds different, but would it be?  Instead of TV over IP, it sounds as Google is trying to bring IP over TV.  But we all know that is ridiculous, because there is no such thing IP over TV!  I’m not an expert, but let me guess!  What they’re trying to do is to pushing out a technology that can allow customers watch TV and also surf the web and do the web interactive stuffs, altogether with ease; I guess such technology has to be very similar to TV over IP!  Anyway, the point is that more than ever before, more media providers are lining up to form new interactive platforms that custom around customers’ lives — all can very well be even more addictive and pleasurable for customers, and it may very well be very profitable for the providers in terms of subscriptions and advertising.