Word: aol
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...asked Primrose what I could expect from my job, and she said AOL technology meant I could probably work from home. When I am at the office, she told me, the dress code is casual, and I could lose the Oxfords-and-blazer look. She spoke well of the company gym, which is soon to offer salsa dancing, and the cafeteria, which just that afternoon was celebrating kielbasa day. Then I asked Primrose the most important question at any new job: "How closely do you guys look at the expense reports?" She paused. "We are focused on that bottom line...
Sensing no big raise coming my way, I inquired about being one of the voices for that "You've got mail" thing. She said I could probably distribute my column via AOL and say, "You've got Joel's column," which I thought would also make a much better movie than that stupid Tom Hanks-Meg Ryan thing...
...about their Porsches and five-bedroom houses. Even so, I asked Primrose to scan the room for me and check out the new crop. "I think there's a lot of good-looking women," she said. She thought I might meet them at company picnics, which often feature the AOL hot-air balloon. This sounded romantic enough, until I heard about the AOL race car, which David Hasselhoff drove in a Baywatch episode. I don't think there's a woman on the planet who wouldn't be putty around that thing...
...thing is clear: This is the make-it-or-break-it millennium for AOL Time Warner. By the year 3000, or maybe even sooner, we will have answers to the questions that plague us this week, such as, Can we talk about something else, please? Is synergy the same thing as convergence or something different but equally wonderful? How many more times in the next 1,000 years can the same story be told? Tweedy Time Inc. makes a jazzy marriage (a movie studio! a cable-TV network! an Internet dotcom!), a clash of cultures, a triumph...
Actually, I have the answers right now. But first, a few disclosures are necessary. Readers have the right to know that TIME magazine will be part of AOL Time Warner. The author of this essay, by contrast, has a day job as editor of Slate, an online magazine published by Microsoft. Microsoft owns an online service, msn, that competes with AOL. Microsoft and AOL Time Warner will have competing investments in the cable industry. On yet another hand, Microsoft and Time Warner are co-investors in a high-speed cable-Internet connection business called Roadrunner. On a fourth hand, Microsoft...