Word: aol
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...amused to read in an account of the press conference announcing the merger of Time Warner and America Online how AOL's Steve Case, who usually wears khakis and a denim shirt, put on a suit for the occasion, while Time Warner's Gerald Levin, who used to be a conservative dresser, showed up without a tie. The identity blur begins...
Besides, editorialists at both the New York Times and the Washington Post tell citizens worried about media diversity and consumers worried about their pocketbooks to relax. This is a merger of cyber apples and earthbound oranges. AOL already has 20 million customers (about half the market) for the dial-up services that link computers to the Internet. Time Warner is already the world's biggest media conglomerate. Joining the two won't substantially increase either's share of its market. As the Post put it, "Down the road, there may be reasons to fear the muscle of AOL Time Warner...
...course, the problem has precisely to do with "down the road"--two or three mergers down the road. Never mind that AOL's Case had been agitating for an FCC rule mandating nondiscriminatory access to Internet service providers (known as open access). Now that AOL has bought its own access, he seems to be saying that no governmental regulatory intervention is necessary. Good old AOL Time Warner will provide open access voluntarily...
Time Warner's planned merger with AOL will create a corporation that is even bigger and more complex. But the principle that guides our journalism is just as simple as it has always been. A respect for journalistic independence has been part of our company's values for so long that it's encoded in our DNA, and the only way our magazine can remain successful is if we continue that approach. If there are failures in judgment, it will be the fault of the editors and journalists here, as it has always been, not of the corporate structure...
STEVE CASE AOL titan joins forces with Time Warner. Ah, about that Bezos Person of the Year thing...