AOL Time Warner Merger
AOL Time Warner MergerINDUSTRY & COMPANY BUSINESS
AOL Time Warner is the world’s leader in Internet technologies, e-commerce services, interactive services, and web brands. AOL started up in 1985 and initially offered limited online services for then a relatively small market of personal computer users. Today, it serves more than 27 million members of its flagship AOL service, along with more than 2.8 million CompuServe members, 80 million registered users of ICQ, and more than 34 million registered users of the Netscape.com service. AOL also operates some of the most popular services on the World Wide Web, including Map Quest, AOL Instant Messenger, AOL MovieFone, Spinner.com and Null Soft’s Winamp, and Digital City, Inc. With its major focus on providing convenient easy-to-use services for mass-market consumers, AOL has played a major role in creating the consumer online experience worldwide, and is leading the development of the next generation Internet. With this focus on consumers, AOL seeks to build a global standard as central to people’s lives as the telephone or television and perhaps even more valuable. Through its strategic alliance with Sun Microsystems, the company develops and offers easy-to-deploy, end-to-end e-commerce and enterprise solutions for companies operating in the net economy. AOL has always been known for providing the most convenient and easiest-to-use interactive service available. The Company pioneered technologies like Keywords for simple navigation, and the Buddy List to enable instant messaging by showing, which of member’s contacts are online. The flagship service offers members a complete package of online features, including the popular My Calendar to organize busy schedules, You’ve Got Pictures to view and share family photographs online, a built-in multimedia player to enjoy the Web’s growing trove of rich audio and video content; and much more. The service can be accessed using any high-speed connection, or by dial-up connections from virtually anywhere in the world.
AOL has also leaded the way in protecting members’ online privacy and security. The service’s built-in Parental Controls offers the best available tools for parents to protect their children from inappropriate online content, choose whom they may or may not receive e-mail from, and even limit the amount of time they spend online. Our cutting-edge privacy protections give online shoppers the highest degree of protection for their credit card and other personal information. AOL is also the only global interactive services provider, offering AOL services in 16 countries in 8 languages. At the same time, AOL offers the leading local services on the World Wide Web. The Company’s Digital Cities, Map Quest, and MovieFone brands that help consumers keep convenient track of what’s happening in their own hometowns.
INDUSTRY TRENDS AND FUTURE
The Internet industry encompasses all companies engaged in creating, developing or processing electronic information through a computer network system. Many of these companies are a direct outgrowth of the computer software industry. Though the Internet is not new, growth of this industry has taken off in the past four...
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