Word: aol
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...that Vodafone has won, the company seems intent on growing even larger. High on the agenda may be a deal with the German publisher Bertelsmann, which owns a 50% stake in AOL's European Internet operations. That would give the company access to Bertelsmann's and AOL's content. And though Mannesman CEO Chris Gent said last week that the current deal is so complicated that it is too early to talk in detail about other possible linkups, no one doubted that they are coming. Europe, it seems, is finally ready to do business at Net speed...
...against America Online on behalf of certain users who upgraded to Windows version 5.0 and found they were then unable to connect to any other Internet-service provider. Apparently some of these folks got confused during the installation process when asked via a pop-up window, "Would you like AOL to be your default Internet connection for Web pages, newsgroups and e-mail?" The right answer for them--and probably for most people who use a Net-service provider in addition to AOL--would have been no. Indeed, the default is no, and if they had just ignored the question...
...perhaps because they were understandably suspicious of the question, they replied yes. And now when they try to fire up a connection to, say, Mindspring or AT&T or UUNET or any other Net-service provider, their AOL dial-up muscles in and blocks access to their old ISP. Some 7 million of AOL's 21 million subscribers have upgraded to 5.0. While no one knows how many of them are afflicted, it was apparently enough to attract lawyers...
Unfortunately, unless they have a computer-science degree or access to a highly motivated 13-year-old, the folks who are now stuck with AOL's loading whenever they want to go online are probably faced with calling AOL's customer-service number to fix it. Why AOL--which is buying Time Warner--doesn't put its fix-it recipe online or on its start-up screen is beyond me. But that's not my problem; you are. And I'm here to help, dear reader...
...respect the corporate values expressed by TIME's Norman Pearlstine and Walter Isaacson in their letter to readers about the merger of TIME's parent company with America Online [AOL-TIME WARNER MERGER, Jan. 24]. In this day of corporate mergers and acquisitions, I believe compatible corporate values make for a successful marriage. I am not familiar with AOL's values, yet I do have the perception that AOL is strongly oriented toward customer service. How else could this online provider grow so rapidly? As a longtime subscriber to TIME, I am impressed by its quality of journalism and fairness...