| Americans expect sales of America Online The management of the Time Warner media empire is ready to sell its Internet division America Online (AOL) to Microsoft, the New York Times reported. According to the publication, over the past few months, the management of both companies has been conducting relevant negotiations, and lawyers are discussing ways to approve this transaction by US antitrust authorities. If the merger goes through, Microsoft's monopoly position will extend to several more areas of the software industry. However, these rumors have not yet received official confirmation. Time Warner spokesman Ed Adler said: "We are indeed in discussions with Microsoft about digital rights technology, and the rest of the stuff is not true - it's just stupid and unwitty rumors." Microsoft declines to comment. Meanwhile, after the release of this information, Time Warner's stock price increased by 1.6%.
Cooperation between Microsoft and AOL began in May last year - after Bill Gates' corporation agreed to pay its competitor $750 million in compensation for unfair play in the Internet browser market. The Netscape browser released by AOL was for a long time more popular than Microsoft Internet Explorer (IE), but after the latter was included in the Windows operating system, IE took the lead, while the Netscape developers fell into a “creative crisis.” In the end, AOL, having received compensation through the court, decided to abandon the production of its own browser and is going to transfer its customers to IE. In addition, corporations have begun working together to create digital copyright management technologies that are designed to prevent computer users from copying intellectual property.
Currently, AOL's main business is providing Internet access; its services are used by 24 million customers. Microsoft is also an Internet service provider—its Microsoft Network (MSN) service has 9 million users. True, both companies offer a way to access the World Wide Web through telephone lines (dial-up), which is already somewhat outdated due to the low data transfer speed. Experiments with providing high-speed access from both providers ended in failure.
AOL is also the manufacturer of a number of popular software products, in particular the Winamp multimedia player and programs for instant communication over the Internet ICQ and AOL Instant Message. Microsoft distributes competing programs - Windows Media Player and MSN Messenger.
Time Warner is engaged in the creation and distribution of television, print, music and film products. It includes companies such as CNN, film producer New Line Cinema, Time magazine and others. The merger of AOL and Time Warner took place at the peak of the Internet boom in 2000, resulting in the formation of the AOL Time Warner empire. However, the Internet boom fizzled out, and the merged corporation began to show dismal financial results. The record for losses was set in 2002 - $100 billion. Moreover, the main source of losses was AOL, which is why last year it was even decided to abandon the combined brand and return to two different names - AOL and Time Warner.
Thus, the merger of AOL and Microsoft is a logical continuation of the final separation of Time Warner. Another thing is that Bill Gates' corporation may now be fined by the European Commission for hundreds of millions of dollars for violations of antitrust laws in Europe, which will worsen its financial condition. It is unclear whether in this case there will be money to buy out AOL, if this company is actually being sold. Igor KOROLEV |
|
