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Comment by beagledude | Hacker News Reader

I'm just amazed AOL still has money

When AOL merged with Time-Warner they kinda traded half of their wealth with eachother. AOL's half turned out to be worthless.

Doesn't AOL still make a couple of $billions per year from old dial-up internet subscriptions?

A large chunk of whom don't actually know they're still signed up, if I recall correctly.

I wonder if there'd be a business in finding out who's subscribed and for a small fee helping them get unsubscribed from AOL.

Be sure to incorporate where they can't sue you and get a domain name ICE can't seize.

Curious as to why this has been downvoted. Do you suppose AOL will sit by idly while you undermine part of its business model? What legal methods of obtaining the subscriber list do you suggest? Do you think a business helping people to unsubscribe from a $10/month or so service will be valuable enough to defend against a legal challenge from a major corporation, valid or otherwise? Am I missing something?

No, they don't. They make money mostly by ads.

http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1468516/0001193125102...

$244.8m in subscription revenue for q3 last year, but falling fast (as people figure out they're still signed up, I guess).

Should've gotten a prenup!

> When AOL merged with Time-Warner

AFAIK, AOL went and bought Time Warner, the deal didn't work out though.

"In 2000, a new company called AOL Time Warner, with Steve Case as chairman, was created when AOL purchased Time Warner for US$164 billion. [...] The shareholders of AOL owned 55% of the new company while Time Warner shareholders owned only 45%, thus the smaller AOL bought out the far larger Time Warner."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_Warner#2000

So yes, AOL bought Time Warner, not the other way around.

It's amazing what kind of revenue you can make when you own some of the most popular websites on Earth. </sarcasm>

They're a totally different company nowadays. Hard to hate when they're doing so damn well for themselves. :)

What's the definition of doing well? Spending money to acquire others? IIRC their new blog/online strategy has yet to be profitable.

TechCrunch, Bebo, and MapQuest are all owned by AOL.

And MapQuest still has the greatest market share somehow...

edit: AOL sold Bebo in June

    MapQuest still has the greatest market share

link? I've never heard this

Google Maps has a larger market share then MapQuest by quite a bit: http://www.hitwise.com/us/datacenter/main/dashboard-10133.ht...

> And MapQuest still has the greatest market share somehow...

No. Google maps has the greatest market share. Mapquest is #2.

Disclaimer: I'm interning at MapQuest.

AOL really screwed up MapQuest. They had:

- the largest market share in consumer free web maps (probably as recent as 4 years ago)

- the holy grail for marketers. The brand reached "verbing" status. People used to say "MapQuest it"

- a health paid API biz. But sold that part of the biz to Microsoft's MapPoint (I was a customer of this and they basicly said I was SOOL when it happened)

It is clear they screwed up MQ but I'm more hopeful with AOl's recent moves. They know their strength lies in making content and getting eyeballs and the companies they grow/acquire reflects that.

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