Customer Reviews

aol.com: How Steve Case Beat Bill Gates, Nailed the Netheads, and Made Millions in the War for the Web

5 star:		(26)
4 star:		(13)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Kara Swisher has covered AOL and the Internet for the business section of The Washington Post since 1994. Now reporting on Silicon Valley for The Wall Street Journal, she lives in San Francisco. This updated version, published in 1999, included an new epilogue by the author.

The book starts with the now legendary meeting between the world-richest man Bill Gates (founder and chairman of Microsoft) and Steve Case (now chairman of AOL) in May 1993. In this meeting, Gates makes the following proposal to Case: "I can buy 20 percent of you or I can buy all of you, or I can go into this business myself and bury you." In hindsight, we now know that Gates did not buy America Online and did not bury them either. With this conversation in the background Swisher discusses the roots, the lack of business plan, the strategy changes (through which AOl got the nickname cockroach: "... a bug you couldn't kill no matter how hard you tried."), the people involved, the battles with Microsoft, Prodigy and CompuServe, the financial problems, the legal problems, the acquisitions of Netscape and various other companies, and Steve Case's vision (the three C's - "communication, community, clarity"). Most of the information comes from inside the company itself, where Swisher has interviewed the numerous people involved, but as a Washington Post-journalist there is plenty of external information.

Although this excellent book is about one of the best-known brands in cyberspace, it is perfectly readable for non-Internet geeks (like me). Yes, yes, I know, there are plenty of names and Internet terms around, but that doesn't even make this a bad and difficult read. I see this book as the first part in the history of America Online (AOL), from pre-startup through to late-1998. But plenty has happened since 1998 and I do expect the author to write another book on those events?!?

AOL.COM is a fascinating and well written documentation on the birth and growth of the giant company we know today. Kara Swisher did a wonderful job of presenting the history of AOL. I found particular interest in the integration of quotes from many different sources including investors, employees, and competitors of AOL.

I am impressed with AOL as a company. Although Steve Case made most of the important decisions, everyone was important to the success of the company. What a great strategy by Jan Brandt on blanketing the country with AOL diskettes, and the idea to make the software user friendly and easy to use was right on. Both of these features lured me to join the AOL customer family.

AOL as a company, along with the aid of this book, is a great encouragement to those who dream for the stars.

This book does an excellent job of telling the story of AOL's rise to the top while being knocked by absolutely everyone. It is a very compelling read - I could not put this book down. If you want to read about how the underdog won in the end - get this book.

AOL.com is worth the read if you are interested in finding out how Steve case was able to transform AOL from an underdog in the online industry to the media titan that it is today. Although AOL has long been discredited by most techies due to its "novice interface," Steve case and AOL managed to understand that ease of use is more important than incorporating "gee wiz features." The earlier part of the book dealing with the formation of the company is definitely the most entertaining, the later part deals with the series of mergers up to and including Netscape.

Speaking as one of the 'digerati' that doesn't understand the appeal of AOL, I decided that I needed to read this book to understand AOL, or at least try. After all, roughly one Internet user in 10 is an AOL user.

And they did crush CompuServ, as well as buy Netscape (the mind boggles).

So, I read the book. I have to admit, I still don't understand AOL especially well, but the book itself is absolutely fascinating.

It focuses on the old history of AOL, and the bits where CompuServ and Netscape run under the juggernaut are a mere footnote to the history proper, which delves deeply into the detail of how things started and zig-zagged from there.

I'd recommend this book to anyone who is even remotely interested in the Internet.

This book is a very informative and interesting book about how America Online started as a small company that ran a bbs to a multi-billion dollar giant with millions of members.

Aol.com features many sources from people inside AOL and Microsoft that tell how Microsoft was too late to the Internet and Online service market.

This book describes the history of AOL from its beginning, which in fact it is remarkably interesting (AOL was not the "big gorilla" a few years ago, though it is easy to forget that). The book reads well (nice for bedtime, when the brain is tired) but I think that the content is very superficial and tells little about the real business behind the critical events during the development Internet and on-line services. I expected much more from this book..

Pretty interesting account of the AOL story. This would have been a lot better if more of a business perspective was used to discuss and analyze the strategies that made AOL the leader.

This is a good book, detailing Steve Case's journey in building AOL. Roughly the first half of the book covers birth through the early 90s, and the remainder is devoted to extensive discussion of AOL's many changes in response to the growth of the Internet.

Often described as a cockroach in cyberspace (in more ways than one), America Online has repeatedly defied critics by sustaining its growth and success through repeated hard times. In going from a distant third (behind Compuserve and Prodigy) to becoming the undisputed top proprietary service, the story of AOL takes the reader through a variety of issues which are still very relevant to the Internet in general (e.g. AOL has been dealing with online pornography, first amendment issues, spam, etc. for years).

This book is well-researched, well-written, and very interesting. Whatever your own opinions of AOL, if you are at all interested in the past and future of the online world, you owe it to yourself to learn about AOL and why it is so hugely successful.

I have been on AOL for quite some time. Not because I am new to the Internet -- I have a vast knowledge on the Internet -- but because I enjoy the sense of community and integrated software that the online service provides. However, I have always been fascinated about what sort of marketing strategy AOL uses in order to remain so popular -- as well as learning about the not so positive areas of the online service.

Swisher supplies us with a very informative book about downfalls and pitfalls of this service. She illustrates the problems the creators went through within their company with other employees. It shows us the various mistakes the software has had over the years. Of course, it focuses on the competition (Bill Gates and MSN comes to mind) and AOL's most powerful source: Steve Case. It also illustrates the more obvious issues, like AOL's intense sexually-natured chat rooms and criminal activity among the members. It also discusses AOL's recent merger with Time Warner.

I urge AOLers to give this great book a whirl. I am glad I picked it up. Who knows, it may teach you a thing or two about becoming a software giant.