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Briton Evans beaten by Rune at French Open

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Netscape

Microsoft and AOL: How Did This Relationship Come Together?

May 1st, 2002, AOL at the time known as America Online announced a deal with Google. That deal was crucial and one of those that made Google the tech giant it is today. Would Google had lost that deal chances are it would have never become the monopolist we know today. With the AOL deal, Google managed to gain further traction and also kill its main competitor at the time, Overture. Also, that deal was critical as it gave Google the exposure needed to get to its IPO. In this article, I want to focus on that single deal. Why? In the tech industry, we all like to think that competence, better technologies, and smart engineers are what matter. However, there is another aspect which is critical and – I argue – the most important. The ability to leverage in distribution strategies that allow scalability in terms of service and profits. With the AOL deal, Google got the traction he needed to gain a competitive edge for years to come. Overture was the father of pay per click advertising By the end of the 1990s Bill Gross, founder of Idealab, an incubator where he could execute all his ideas, had also founded GoTo a search engine that for the first time used the . pay per click business model In other words, while in the past web portals, like AOL or Yahoo just sent undifferentiated traffic to websites. GoTo introduced a different logic. That of getting paid by the business advertising only when users clicked through it. Thus, only when there was relevant traffic. The logic behind the GoTo might seem trivial today, but it was revolutionary at the time. In fact, with his pay per click Bill Gross would buy undifferentiated traffic from web portals at a low cost and sell that traffic for a much higher price. business model GoTo soon changed the name to become Overture; while GoTo was both a search engine and an advertising network. Overture instead became merely an advertising network able to arbitrage on the price difference between undifferentiated traffic and qualified traffic. Thus, Overture was the first to invent and to prove the fact that the pay per click would be the business model of the internet. At the time AOL was among the most prominent web portals, and among the most significant deals Overture had closed for its distribution strategy. At the time although Google was growing at super fast speed, it wasn’t any closer to being the market dominator it would become soon. Google copied Overture ad model and "stole" the AOL deal By 2002 Google had finally launched its network that replicated that pay per click business model, and it improved on it. While it also figured out that if he wanted to scale up fast, it had to close large deals with web portals like AOL. Although nowadays AOL doesn’t sound to have any importance. Google AdWords At the time it was among the most popular portals on the web. Known as America Online in 1998 it purchased Netscape, the dominant browser of that time. In short, there was a time when AOL was almost synonym with the Internet. In may 2002 the deal between AOL and Overture was expiring, and it was time for Google to take swift actions. As reported in the book “ ” at the time Page said in relation to the AOL deal “I want us to bid to win,” while Kordestani in charge of business development and sales warned “You’re betting the company if you do that.” Googled: The End of the World As We Know It According to Auletta account in the book Page replied to Kordestani “we should be able to monetize the pages, if not we deserve to go out of business.” Whether or not those words are accurate that deal points out a critical aspect. At that point, Page and Brin were not only the engineers that had created PageRank but most of all shrewd entrepreneurs that understood the importance to close the right deals to kill competitors and dominate the market! Overture sued for patent infringement then Yahoo settled the lawsuit with Google Not long after the adoption of Google AdWord Overture sued it for patent infringement. The claim was the Google had copied the Overture model. However, after losing the AOL deal Overture 36 percent, with its stock at $21.99. stock plunged Although the company would keep making high profits margins, it would never recover from that. In fact, in 2003 Yahoo bought , valuing it at $24.63, roughly a 15 percent premium compared to its closing at the time of the deal. Overture for $1.63 billion Now part of Yahoo, in 2004, Google settled the Overture dispute. As reported on “Google agreed to give Yahoo 2.7 million shares, worth $291 million to $365 million if the shares sell within the range of $108 to $135 that Google has estimated for its initial offering price.” NY Times It was the end of Overture and the rise of the most influential tech giant, today worth more than eight hundred billion dollars. A few deals can make a difference between a failed business and a multi-billion dollar company The reason why I focused on this story is to emphasize the importance of for any business. Even the most innovative technology without a proper distribution is doomed. Thus, Google and its founders have been most of all shrewd businessmen before being engineers. distribution strategy The Overture story and the AOL deal, show us just how at a certain point in time business looks way more like a warfare. Although we like to believe in stories of enlightened entrepreneurs that don’t focus on competition but rather just on creating value for their customers. There is a particular moment in the life of any business where the difference between getting a deal or losing it means life or death. In those moments a businessperson will do what it takes to make his company survive. Originally published on FourWeekMBA.

Business Lessons From The AOL Deal That Made Google A Tech Giant

Disclaimer: I’m the co-founder of Pontus.so Treat AI as Software In the era of integrating AI into various software applications, it's essential to remember that AI is, at its core, still software. The same fundamental software principles apply, and one such principle worth emphasizing is the Separation of Concerns (SoC). The primary goal of the separation of concerns is to enhance the modularity, readability, maintainability, and reusability of software systems. As defined by Wikipedia: In computer science, the separation of concerns is a design principle for dividing a computer program into distinct sections, each addressing a specific concern. Why Avoid Directly Calling OpenAI in Your Business Logic? The decision of whether or not to directly invoke OpenAI's services within your business logic depends on your context. In the world of personal endeavors and small startups, agility is your most trusted companion. It's the realm where creativity knows no bounds, and innovation often thrives on the boundless enthusiasm of a small, dedicated team. As such, if you are working on a personal side project or managing a small startup, you may proceed with whatever it takes to complete tasks and deliver value to your users or customers. However, in the case of more established companies with a team of over 20 developers, direct integration with AI services could lead to long-term technical debt and reduced future agility. can account for up to 40% of the overall value of your technology. This accumulation of technical debt results in increased coupling, making it challenging to switch language model (LLM) providers and implement observability, caching, and other essential components. Technical debt These costs continue to mount as you postpone the creation of an abstraction layer within your enterprise, ultimately resulting in wasted time. Thus, it is advisable to avoid direct calls to OpenAI without utilizing an interface. The Role of an AI Orchestration Layer in Separation of Concerns An AI Orchestration Layer (AOL) is the key to efficiently managing the components required to transition from a prompt to a response. An AI Orchestration Layer (AOL) serves as the architectural backbone of AI applications. It functions as a central hub that coordinates and manages the flow of information and actions within the AI system. It provides reusable components that can be easily replaced as needed. A survey of the AI landscape reveals various reusable components, including: Ensuring the health of your AI service. Monitoring: Optimizing GPT calls to save both time and money. Caching: Protecting user privacy. PII Sanitization: Preventing the dissemination of NSFW content to users. Toxicity Check: Ensuring GPT has access to relevant information. Retrieval Augmented Generation: Maintaining sanitized records of GPT inputs and outputs. Logging: Ensuring the structure of your responses is well-defined and enforced. Validation: How to Get Started? If you prefer a library-based approach and work with Python or JavaScript, consider using Langchain, which can assist you in implementing the necessary AI orchestration layer. However, if you require broader language support and a more opinionated approach to AI integration, you may need to develop your own solution or explore . Pontus.so Also published here.

How Separation of Concerns Elevates Your AI Strategy 

When I interviewed Gerry Campbell, we looked at the . While we go back over twenty years, there are some valuable lessons to learn from the whole story. Let’s see why, but first, let me give you a quick recap of what happened during these years. History of AOL The first internet wave and the first walled gardens In the first wave of the commercial Internet (1994-1999) the first big tech players and tech giants were walled gardens. Those platforms enabled access to proprietary networks (this wasn’t really the Internet, as those were not open protocols) where users could enjoy a set of online services (emails, news, forums, and later on search). These first tech giants were companies like AOL, Prodigy, CompuServe, and GEnie. Their was straightforward, you would pay for a monthly subscription, and enjoy a few hours of access to their proprietary networks. For each additional hour users spend on top of the subscription, they would be charged based on consumption. business model The first Internet giant: AOL As AOL took over the Internet in the first wave of the mid-90s, it also opened up its to more and more people, by changing its revenue model. From the subscription and consumption model, AOL had to adapt to the unlimited subscription model where users could enjoy unlimited access to AOL’s proprietary network. With this new model, AOL users’ base grew even further. But it also showed some of its weaknesses, as the platform became unstable, with a wide number of new members. In this time period, the Internet also grew exponentially, favoring the birth of a few tech players. In this period, something very counterintuitive happened. Search, which seemed a feature to offer on top of the Internet, became a killer commercial application! platform Browsers wrecked down the walls of the proprietary networks As the number of sites on the Internet grew exponentially, this opened up the need for a tool that enabled one to surf the web to find the most relevant web pages. In parallel to the development of proprietary networks, like AOL, other tools had turned out to be congenial to the Internet. The first was the browser, with a player like Mosaic, which in a short time span, became very popular. Yet by 1994, a group of young people that had also worked at Mosaic (among which venture capitalist Marc Andreessen, founder of a16z), also built a browser called Netscape, which by 1995 became very popular. Netscape drew the attention of Microsoft’s Bill Gates, which understood how browsers could become the gatekeepers of the Internet. This spurred a war between Microsoft and Netscape, which culminated in Microsoft’s release of Internet Explorer, bundled in its Microsoft Office products. Thus, Microsoft leveraged its position in the market, to quickly gain market shares, against Netscape. This drew the attention of the regulators who called Microsoft for abusing its dominating position. This led to the parallel development of another commercial killer application: search. Search turns out as a commercial killer application As the Browsers’ War went on, search became the most important application of the Internet, enabling users to surface the growing numbers of pages on the Web, which was growing at an untamable pace. Search, therefore, was essential. However, the first search engines, while useful, they were still too much focused on paid placements, and also much easier to game, by webmasters who could easily have their pages show up as relevant, even if not. This paved the way for new players. One epitome of that was GoTo.com, created by the legendary Bill Gross. GoTo.com not only mixed paid results as if they were organic results. It enabled everyone to bid and compete on its advertising platform. Thus, making the paid search a primary feature. While this model, called CPC was revolutionary, it was also skewed substantially toward paid vs organic results. In that period, toward the end of the 1990s, another player had developed a search engine able to index, and rank the growing mole of web pages. This was first called Backrub, out of a P.h.d. project at Stanford. And later it was called Google! Google picked up quickly, becoming de facto the most popular search engine at the time. Its ability stood in enabling websites to rank organically without having to pay. Initially, Google’s founders were quite skeptical of the advertising model for search engines, as they thought this would be intrinsically biased toward paid ads, thus not giving relevant results. Yet, over time they set to change that. They, therefore, started to build an advertising machine, able to also rank paid results based on various factors. Thus, Google borrowed from the GoTo.com CPC model and it improved on it. This formula turned out to be extremely powerful. The Google’s deal that made it the tech giant we know today While Google’s user base was scaling quickly in its early years. Its advertising machine would be built later on (2001-2004). Thus, in the early years, had to rely on deals to further scale-up, strengthen its position, and become the market leader. Among the most important deals Google sealed at the time, there was the deal with AOL. Indeed, AOL saw search as a feature within its proprietary network, thus featuring a search engine that enabled users to surf the web. Initially, GoTo.com (later called Overture) had a deal with AOL to be featured as the main search engine. Yet as this contract expired by the late 90s, Google jumped on it, managing to get the deal with AOL, in place of Overture! This deal was a very important one, which put Google on a further trajectory. Google business development growth Proprietary networks got stuck in their game while users’ sophistication grew Over the years and going into the early 2000s, proprietary networks had become less and less relevant, as more Internet/Web players had spurred up. From e-commerce to search, platforms like AOL had lost traction. In that scenario, Google became the new King in town. The new King in town is Google From then on Google became the new dominant player of the Internet. From wrecking the walls of closed proprietary networks. Over the years (the 2010s – present) Google, then become Alphabet turned into a sort of Walled Garden. No more about first-mover? Technologies can give an important advantage in the very short term. However, those advantages can be lost pretty easily, if a technology is not leveraged fast. Yet implementing new, unproven technology is also risky, initially very expensive, and often requires the ability to develop a whole new market. To make things worse, even when this new market has been developed, that doesn’t give you a long-term competitive advantage. In fact, new players that come in can do the same, by simply copying part of the strategy that turned out to be successful. In short, the first player laid the foundation, for the latecomers to leverage the existing technology, and by improving on it to gain an advantage. But if being first is not giving a long-term advantage, what’s the key ingredient there? The value of network effects Many tech companies, from the rise of Microsoft going forward, understood the value of a platform strategy. A platform strategy consists in creating value for users by enabling an entrepreneurial ecosystem on top of it. The essence of stands in the fact that the service becomes exponentially more valuable for each additional user as more users join in. Of course, building network effects isn’t easy either. As many platforms like Uber and Airbnb figured at the beginning when they needed to understand how to kick off these networks’ effects. network effects Thus, when it comes to creating a lasting competitive advantage in this digital landscape, even if you are a first-mover you got to think in terms of network effects. The first-scaler advantage matters only if you can dominate a market in the long-term When Netscape built the most valuable commercial browser, back in the mid-90s, the company gave up profits, to grow as quickly as possible. The bet was if Netscape grew large enough to have most market shares of the browsers market it could eventually enjoy also wide profit margins in the long-term. Yet, Netscape awoke too early. And while Microsoft did leverage its dominating position to crush Netscape, it also managed to overtime destroy its market leadership. Indeed, while Netscape became a multi-billion dollar success, it never turned a profit, and it eventually sold to AOL, as the pressure from Microsoft was becoming unsustainable. Microsoft Thus, even when you do scale, and you do it first, you still need to make sure to stably control that market. Otherwise, like in the case of Netscape vs. Microsoft you might be taken over. Of course, in this particular case, Netscape was crashed by a tech monopoly that took advantage of its dominating position. Changing business playbooks When browsing took over the early Internet, that was quite unexpected for many. Also, very smart people, like had envisioned a more linear evolution of the Internet, almost as if that was supposed to bring TV online. While this vision would be in part realized through the 2010s (see ) in reality, it also shows that the model of entertainment of the Internet evolved in a whole different way than TV. Bill Gates Netflix The same applied to search. When Google took over, existing giants like AOL, who had successfully dominated in the previous decade, were taken aback by the success of the latecomers in the Internet revolution. First, players like AOL thought that search was not a commercial killer application, but rather a feature to be added on top of their services. Second, they didn’t envision, initially, how search would change the whole Internet playbook altogether. No more, based on conventional marketing, a tool like Google took over, as it combined product, marketing, and distribution as if they were a whole. Third, even when consumers were quickly shifting to these new tools, it was very hard to acknowledge for existing/dominating players. In short, things might work the same for a long-time and then suddenly change. And when things do change, they do it so quickly that the dominating market position might be swept away pretty quickly. That is the essence of business innovation!

AOL's Demise and What it Tells Us About the End Of The First-Mover Advantage

How Ava Labs is Reshaping Global Web3 Adoption

Jak Ava Labs přetváří globální přijetí Web3

Cómo Ava Labs está transformando la adopción global de la Web3

Comment Ava Labs révolutionne l'adoption du Web3 à l'échelle mondiale

Ava Labs が Web3 の世界的な導入をどのように変えているのか

როგორ ცვლის Ava Labs გლობალური Web3-ის მიღებას

Ava Labs Global Web3 кабыл алууну кантип өзгөртүп жатат

Kaip „Ava Labs“ keičia pasaulinį Web3 pritaikymą

Cum Ava Labs remodelează adoptarea globală Web3

Ako Ava Labs pretvára globálne prijatie Web3

Hur Ava Labs omformar Global Web3 Adoption

Paano Binabago ng Ava Labs ang Global Web3 Adoption

Ava Labs global Web3 qabul qilishni qanday o'zgartirmoqda

What Are General Search Engines?

Somnia Looks to Community Governance and Open Standards to Shape Future of Virtual Worlds

সোমনিয়া ভার্চুয়াল ওয়ার্ল্ডের ভবিষ্যত গঠনের জন্য কমিউনিটি গভর্নেন্স এবং উন্মুক্ত মানদণ্ডের দিকে নজর দেয়

Somnia setzt auf Community Governance und offene Standards, um die Zukunft virtueller Welten zu gestalten

Somnia busca la gobernanza comunitaria y los estándares abiertos para dar forma al futuro de los mundos virtuales

Somnia se tourne vers la gouvernance communautaire et les normes ouvertes pour façonner l’avenir des mondes virtuels

सोमनिया आभासी दुनिया के भविष्य को आकार देने के लिए सामुदायिक प्रशासन और खुले मानकों की ओर देख रहा है

Somnia はコミュニティ ガバナンスとオープン スタンダードに着目し、仮想世界の未来を形作る

Somnia는 가상 세계의 미래를 형성하기 위해 커뮤니티 거버넌스와 개방형 표준을 모색합니다.

Somnia busca governança comunitária e padrões abertos para moldar o futuro dos mundos virtuais

Somnia надеется на управление сообществом и открытые стандарты для формирования будущего виртуальных миров

Somnia, Sanal Dünyaların Geleceğini Şekillendirmek İçin Topluluk Yönetişimine ve Açık Standartlara Bakıyor

Somnia hướng tới quản trị cộng đồng và các tiêu chuẩn mở để định hình tương lai của thế giới ảo

Somnia 期待社区治理和开放标准塑造虚拟世界的未来

The Humane AI pin debacle is making waves as consumers reject the device as not living up to their standards – or even the hype. Its physical limitations and software flaws have left buyers upset that the product does not justify the $700 price tag. But the Humane AI pin is not the first tech gadget to fail. The Apple Newton, Nintendo Virtual Boy, Microsoft Zune, and Sony Betamax are just some of the many examples of technologies that didn’t quite make it. Netscape, Windows 8, and AOL are more examples of internet technologies that started out strong but failed to hold on to their market share, instead ceding users to other technologies. Google Glass was a $1,500 gadget meant to offer users the ability to access information simply by looking through the lens, but its ability to discreetly record meant that many private venues refused wearers access. The Pebble smartwatch was a fine idea, but it was unable to hold onto its market position once Apple and Samsung entered the smartwatch market. Among the more recent and infamous companies in the health and pharmaceutical realm is Theranos. The company, headed by its founder Elizabeth Holmes, claimed to have a machine that had blood diagnostic technology, which could allegedly detect numerous diseases with just one drop of blood. Unfortunately for Holmes, she got caught up in her lies and has been jailed for fraud. Crazy ideas like Colgate’s Lasagna, Evian’s Water Bra, or the Face Trainer demonstrated that some products are best left on the drawing board. Perhaps the Humane AI Pin is a complete flop due to its many faults. Or it is simply ahead of its time and may just need a few tweaks and a different technological time frame to fit into and make more sense. The founders and creators of any technology company and product must be aware of the competition, the market, consumer moods with regard to the economy, and most importantly, whether there is actually a need for whatever is being made. There are many inventions that never had any real or practical use. The ones that succeeded are those that consumers wanted or needed and were able to afford. Tech companies need to pay attention to these factors and operate accordingly. This way, debacles like the Humane AI pin can be avoided. The Humane AI pin debacle is making waves as consumers reject the device as not living up to their standards – or even the hype. Its physical limitations and software flaws have left buyers upset that the product does not justify the $700 price tag. But the Humane AI pin is not the first tech gadget to fail. The Apple Newton, Nintendo Virtual Boy, Microsoft Zune, and Sony Betamax are just some of the many examples of technologies that didn’t quite make it. Netscape, Windows 8, and AOL are more examples of internet technologies that started out strong but failed to hold on to their market share, instead ceding users to other technologies. Google Glass was a $1,500 gadget meant to offer users the ability to access information simply by looking through the lens, but its ability to discreetly record meant that many private venues refused wearers access. The Pebble smartwatch was a fine idea, but it was unable to hold onto its market position once Apple and Samsung entered the smartwatch market. Among the more recent and infamous companies in the health and pharmaceutical realm is Theranos. The company, headed by its founder Elizabeth Holmes, claimed to have a machine that had blood diagnostic technology, which could allegedly detect numerous diseases with just one drop of blood. Unfortunately for Holmes, she got caught up in her lies and has been jailed for fraud. Crazy ideas like Colgate’s Lasagna, Evian’s Water Bra, or the Face Trainer demonstrated that some products are best left on the drawing board. Perhaps the Humane AI Pin is a complete flop due to its many faults. Or it is simply ahead of its time and may just need a few tweaks and a different technological time frame to fit into and make more sense. The founders and creators of any technology company and product must be aware of the competition, the market, consumer moods with regard to the economy, and most importantly, whether there is actually a need for whatever is being made. There are many inventions that never had any real or practical use. The ones that succeeded are those that consumers wanted or needed and were able to afford. Tech companies need to pay attention to these factors and operate accordingly. This way, debacles like the Humane AI pin can be avoided.

Stories, News & Mentions about AOL

Aol’s Stories on HackerNoon

Aol's News & Mentions