AOL

"AOL. (Kara Swisher"

"The most important lesson learned can be summarized as follows: when the company, and its employees, partners, and users were happy, AOL flourished. When these constituencies were unhappy, it spiraled down. It was a simple formula. Make multiple communities happy and all will be well. Fail to do so, and it all falls apart."

"Even though I was the Vice Chairman of AOL and ran our Audience business—the growth engine for the company’s transformation—when I read Iris Chang’s book, it didn’t take me long to want to turn it into a movie. Producing a film while being a senior executive of a major online service, as well as the owner of sports teams, was an enormous amount of work. I enjoyed every minute of making the film, from the casting of the actors to the negotiation with Chinese television. Only later did I realize that fulfilling my need to express myself had been a strain. It made me happy. And it led directly to my creating SnagFilms in 2008. I had a need to express myself, and a few steps down the road, I’d created a really fast-growing business."

"Broadcasted by France 5 in November 2002, the documentary "In the Life of a CEO" captures the reaction of Stéphane Treppoz, CEO of AOL, on the same day Free was announced. The executive is truly stunned. "What a nightmare, this thing!" he says, pondering the "not obvious" economic equation of his competitor's offer."

"For AOL, which sells a similar subscription for 45 euros per month, the math is simple. If the company aligns, it loses 30% of its revenue. That's one billion euros. Impossible. "It's not because someone jumps off a cliff that I necessarily have to follow him," he tells journalists during a conference call. Today, Free and Xavier Niel are still there. AOL is not."

"Prodigy was an early player looking to connect personal computers on a private subscriber network. Prodigy’s owners were IBM and Sears. IBM, the largest computer maker in the world at the time, and Sears, one of the biggest retailers, were offering news, sports, weather, entertainment, and home shopping through Sears and other retailers. Members could “message” one another only on the proprietary, closed Prodigy network. The biggest of these new networking services was AOL, followed closely by CompuServe, owned by H&R Block Inc. and General Electric Company. They were all clunky, closed-off networks or “walled gardens.” Simple connections took a few minutes and required special software and modems, and some services charged per minute for usage!"

"I was eager to get a toehold in the nascent industry. If you believe in the laws of attraction, they were working when I got a call from an investment banker who said Paul Allen, a cofounder of Microsoft, had around 25 percent of AOL stock—and now wanted to get out of it."

"“Let me tell you the whole story,” he began. The reason Paul Allen wanted to sell his block of AOL was to avoid a conflict of interest: Microsoft was about to come out with a new operating system that would directly compete with AOL. Bill cited Microsoft’s 90 percent share of the PC software market and said, “We will soon have our own web portal. It’s gonna be called The Microsoft Network—MSN—and it will be a dial-up internet service provider (ISP) tucked inside the release of Windows 95.” And then Bill Gates issued the real warning he wanted to convey: “And when we release this, it’s gonna be very difficult for customers that upgrade to Windows 95 to be able to find AOL… and we think Microsoft Network is gonna be a huge success. “So, you know, I don’t want you making the mistake of putting your money into something that we’re gonna put out of business.” This was rather brass knuckles of Bill, and sometimes this was his way; it is how you get to 90 percent market share of anything."

"Strategically, I knew that Bill was blocking an easy play between AOL, the fastest-growing online service, and TCI, the largest cable operator in the country. But I also believed what he was saying about the market, so I asked him, “What are you suggesting? What’s the alternative?” “Well, why don’t you just buy twenty percent of Microsoft Network? This is going wide fast, and it’s certain to be a massive success.” “What are you going to charge me for this?” I asked. “Well, why don’t you pay me the same amount you were going to pay Paul for his block. This could be worth an enormous amount… who knows?” This was a rather rich ask. Gates was seeking, for just 20 percent of his new and untested service, the same price we were about to pay for 25 percent of the leader in the online access business. It might sound a little arrogant, yet it also sounded like the truth."