In Retrospect - Executives on How the AOL-Time Warner Merger Went So Wrong - NYTimes.com
MR. LEVIN I used to think at the time it was a clash of cultures and a misreading of the dot-com bubble, but I now upon reflection believe that the transaction was undone by the Internet itself.
I think it’s something that no one could have foreseen, and to this day, whether Apple is going to dominate entertainment or whether Amazon is going to dominate publishing, all the old business plans are out the window. How do you get paid for content? And the consumer has access to everything and now it’s going to be on a handheld device, so what I call the rolling thunder of the Internet started actually to eat its own, which was AOL. AOL was the Google of its time. It was how you got to the Internet, but it was using some old media business ideas that were undone by the Internet itself, and that’s why Google came along.
MR. PARSONS The business model sort of collapsed under us, and then finally this cultural matter. As I said, it was beyond certainly my abilities to figure out how to blend the old media and the new media culture. They were like different species, and in fact, they were species that were inherently at war.
In Retrospect - Executives on How the AOL-Time Warner Merger Went So Wrong - NYTimes.com
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