Episode 44: AOL - Time Warner (with the Internet History Podcast)

Acquired

Ben Gilbert and David Rosenthal

Ma, Business, Technology, Acquisitions, Startups, Venturecapital, Vc, Investing, Investment

4.7 • 5.2K Ratings

🗓️ 18 September 2017

⏱️ 107 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

On this extra-long episode of Acquired, Brian McCullough from the Internet History Podcast returns to discuss perhaps the most (in)famous merger of all time: AOL - Time Warner. Who doesn’t remember the soothing sounds of 56k modems and the timeless phrase, “You’ve Got Mail”? Join us all as we unpack how one of the biggest ISP’s of the 90’s tried to take over the world… and fell far short.

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Topics Covered Include:

AOL’s status in the 90’s / early 00’s
Explaining just what it is that AOL did at the height of their popularity
How AOL pioneered a number of internet paradigms
AOL’s persistent money troubles and bailouts from other companies
Steve Case foreseeing the coming era of broadband, inspiring AOL to pursue working with a cable company
Ebay vs. Time Warner in a down-to-the-wire war for a merger with AOL
Why the money dried up for AOL after their merger with Time Warner
AOL and its value in the post-Time-Warner era
Speculating about what would have happened had AOL and others stayed independent businesses
And much discussion on how to grade this one…

The Carve Out:

Ben: Give and Take by Adam Grant
David: Season of the Witch by David Talbot
Brian: A Mind at Play: How Claude Shannon Invented the Information Age by Rob Goodman

Transcript

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0:00.0	So like a thousand dollars put in dominoes at its nator has a better return than apple.
0:05.6	Wow.
0:07.6	We're in the wrong business.
0:09.6	Yeah, I know.
0:11.4	Bottom fishing is a dangerous game though.
0:13.4	Yeah, yeah. Welcome back to episode 44 of Acquired, the podcast about technology acquisitions and IPOs.
0:32.3	I'm Ben Gilbert. I'm David Rosenthal and we are your hosts. So today
0:36.5	back by popular demand we've got Brian McCullough of the Internet History
0:40.7	Podcast on the show for a crossover episode.
0:43.4	So thank you for joining us and hello Brian.
0:47.0	Hi guys, popular demand, are you sure?
0:50.0	Yes.
0:51.0	You're very sure.
0:52.0	This episode was one of the more popular ones of this year.
0:57.0	Did we do the other one this year?
0:59.0	It's trust me, it's in my top 20 20 for sure and I'm over 150 episodes at this point
1:04.8	Wow sweet well you are in our top five so I think that I think the melding of the format
1:11.2	sort of like makes us all three of us up our games a little bit you know?
1:16.7	It does it does I think because it forced a little change for us.
1:20.2	We were talking about this before the show but listeners Dave and I were talking about how you know we do our research for these episodes with Brian
1:26.8	But knowing that he's got such a clear narrative around it we sort of just have this spew of facts and we can sort of play the role of, hey wait a minute, what
1:35.2	about instead of actually structuring the narrative ourselves?
	...

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