[Gllug] RedHat to buy AOL

[Vincent AE Scott]

Martyn Drake(martyn at drake.org.uk)@Wed, Jan 23, 2002 at 12:24:02PM +0000:
> On Wed, 23 Jan 2002 10:12:23 +0000 will wrote:
> 
> > And what of AOL-TW's move to restore competition in the operating 
> > systems market? AOL-TW isn't in the OS business, never has been, and 
> > won't be in the future: it's now gone on the record to give *a 
> > comprehensive denial that there was anything in the Washington Post 
> > story which claimed AOL was in discussions to acquire Linux distro Red
> > Hat.*
> 
> All I will say is look what happened to Netscape.  I think I said enough
> :)  Also, if AOL Time-Warner (who seem to be eaten more film companies
> these days, and although not new, I was shocked when New Line got eaten by
> them) _were_ take over Red Hat, they still haven't made a Linux client for
> accessing the AOL network yet have they?  AOL have enough problems
> supporting MacOS-X don't they?  <shakes head>

vertical consolidation

> 
> > Phew.  The nightmare scenario where I am asked to log in with my 'screen
> > name' seems a little further away.
> 
> What pisses me off more at the moment is the antics of Verisign.  I
> understand they've just eaten another registry adding to their ever
> increasing monopoly of domain registries.

horizontal consolidation

Big companies dont get bigger by becomming any better at what they do,
just by 0wning more of what you pay for, and selling you the same stuff
under a different name.

What i dont get tho, is how AOL became so amazingly big.  big enough to
buy TW at least.  but in my mind it makes sense for them to attempt
getting a complete vertical line from the consumer all the way thru to
the media content.  undoubtedly this is what they'd like to achieve.
Buying up an OS just brings them one step closer.  

oh, and i wouldnt believe anything a company says.  certainly not one
who's got fingers in many pies.


-v

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