AOL Time Warner is apparently in negotiations to buy Red Hat – the closest thing Linux has to a corporate identity (original source: Washington Post – see related discussions at Slashdot and MetaFilter). It would be interesting to see how AOL/TW would handle having a stake in the success of Linux. AOL has long had a love/hate relationship with Microsoft and the ubiquitous Windows platform. They need it to succeed (so far at least). I suppose having the most promising underdog operating systems would be a nice compliment to having the most promising underdog web browser (Mozilla).
Red Hat has had a strong web presence since their purchase of web design firm Atomic Vision a few years ago. Atomic Vision was responsible for the original design of Cnet’s Download.com, one of the better design on the web at the time. For a while, Red Hat / Atomic Vision produced some great web work, including Red Hat’s own site (great logo) and the open source news site Wide Open News. Both sites have since deteriorated somewhat in quality but are still quite good and I get the impression that much of what was bought with Atomic Vision has since been laid off (see sob story).
It’s fascinating how the life’s work of large groups of people can get lost in the mix of mergers and acquisitions. I get the feeling AOL/TW doesn’t even know it owns ICQ or WinAmp (although, I died a little bit the day WinAmp started including an AOL icon as part of its installation). They seem completely unaware of their own participation in the development of the file swapping Gnutella service.
I wouldn’t expect AOL for Linux for Dummies next week. AOL/TW has been slow to leverage their technology takeovers so far. Netscape hasn’t done much at all (their still pushing Netscape 4.x even though the open source Mozilla project has produced a far superior browser). ICQ is still an odd ball next to AOL Instant Messenger. There are two possibilities here:
- they are looking a little farther down the road for integration of these various entities and a return on these investments or;
- they have no idea what they are doing.
Consumers are like electricity, they’ll take the path of least resistance. So far, this has generally been dictated by pre-installation and universal compatibility of the Windows and Internet Explorer platforms (that’s compatibility via monopoly, btw) and the Wal-Mart-style lowest common denominator approach taken by AOL.
Bill Gates has often said that in 30 years, Coca-Cola will still be on top, but Microsoft will not. I think he’s right, but I think they’ll be enjoying the next 25 years first.
Redhat has been talking of embedded systems for a while now.
AOL does not have an “AOL Appliance”…
My call is an AOL appliance that can run some great software for you as a bonus, but the kernel won’t be compiled with Joe Blow’s TCP/IP support either.
So AOL gets the efforts of people like Xiamin, Sun (staroffice), Gnome Office and the like, and only has to buy one linux company to be well ahead of the game…
Over the past two years, ICQ has been quietly migrated to the AIM (AOL Instant Message) protocol. The original ICQ protocol has been completely replaced. As this transition nears completeion, the reliability and availability of the older (icq protocol version 5 and below) servers has declined. This has forced the numerous underground and open-source ICQ projects to scramble to reverse-engineer the AIM protocol. (This work is now nearing completion too).
Apparantly the AIM and ICQ systems are now only kept seperate for legal reasons (intergrating the services would be an illegal use of their monopoly in the instant messaging industry).
So the perceived lack of integration in the public is likely by design. While behind the scenes, major techinal integration has already taken place.
I believe that AOL does have an Internet appliance: when I was last in the US, I saw something called AOL TV for sale at places like CompUSA and Circuit City. Apparently it’s not available in Canada. It seems to work much like Microsoft’s WebTV.
Of course the real story here is not about the future of technology and business, but how many company names can be appended together. America Online Time Warner is a big winner so far. MSNBC isn’t bad either. At least they didn’t rename ICQ and AOL’s AIM, ICQAIM (pronounced ‘I came’).
I wonder how many characters a humble hyphen can hold together before snapping.
<james_earl_jones>
This is MSNBCBCBSABCNN
</james_earl_jones>
Advice from O’Reilly: Think Twice, Red Hat.
“This is MSNBCBCBSABCNN”… no doubt “brought to you by genuine Bud ice dry draft lite.” Why are there two options in merger/partnership/new direction/new product branding?:
1. having the entire contents of the merger barfed into the successor title; or
2.chosing a neutral but whacked new word – clarica?
I look forward to the full corporate backlash when names like “Smith and Jones Investments Inc.” or the “Windsor Textiles Corporation” come back in vogue.
Or maybe not. News.com says Sources: AOL not bidding for Red Hat.
Headlines that say “Sources” always get me. How is saying “Sources: AOL not bidding for Red Hat” any better than saying “AOL not bidding for Red Hat” other than ineffectively washing the hands of the publisher of the reliablity of the information (I realize I’m answering my own question here – but I’m too lazy to re-write this paragraph into a statement rather than a question).
Somebody was wrong here, cNet or the Washington Post.