The companies that develop valuable products and know-how will find the Web a more congenial atmosphere, because they’ll have better technology and lower costs than they’ll be able to get in a deal with a proprietary online service.
A real challenge is how long AOL can keep the interest of companies like The New York Times … now beginning to see its own way through the world of cyberspace.
The Microsoft Network promises to be a formidable rival for America Online.
Windows 95 could be running on up to 65 million PCs by the end of 1996, all of them a mouse-click away from the Microsoft Network – a huge advantage that [America Online chief executive Steve] Case claims is patently unfair.
The Internet is more like a social space than a thing so that its effects are more like those of Germany than those of hammers.
European versions of AOL could be up in Germany, England, and France by the end of the year. Case and company are currently looking for a partner of similar stature to expand into Asia.
The dark horse looming over everything is the Internet itself, which some say has the potential to doom not just AOL, but all the proprietary services, to the ash heap of online history.
While there is no doubt that the Internet folds into existing social functions and extends them in new ways – translating the act of shopping, for example, into an electronic form – what are far more cogent as possible long-term political effects of the Internet are the ways in which it institutes new social functions, ones that do not fit easily within those of characteristically modern organizations. The problem is that these new functions can only become intelligible if a framework is adopted that does not limit the discussion from the outset to modern patterns of interpretation.
Case sees online services evolving over the next decade into a mass medium engaging tens of millions of people, for whom logging on will become as much a part of everyday life as making a phone call. And he’s determined to transform AOL into flashy, interactive multimedia that will lead the way.
This summer, more than 3 million Americans were sending e-mail, arguing in forums, flirting in chat rooms, and wandering the Net on AOL, with thousands more signing up every day. The service expects to have more than 5 million subscribers online next year.