Subject: AOL Buys Everyone (from TidBITs)

From: [email-masked] (Hans-Martin Adorf)
Date: Tue, 6 Jun 1995 09:25:38 +0200

AOL Buys Everyone
-----------------
  by Adam C. Engst <[email-masked]>

  Actually AOL hasn't bought everyone just yet, but at the rate they
  are acquiring companies, they'll put even acquisition-hungry
  Symantec to shame. There have been a number of purchases, so sit
  down, catch your breath, and pay attention to the new list of
  AOL's wholly-owned subsidiaries.

  The first purchase in recent history was AOL's acquisition of
  WAIS, Inc., the firm that spun off from Thinking Machines after
  the development of the WAIS (Wide Area Information Servers)
  technology. WAIS servers provide fast, full-text searching of
  massive databases and are widely used throughout the Internet as
  search engines. More recently, WAIS provided custom online
  services for publishers such as Encyclopedia Brittanica and Dow
  Jones. AOL paid for WAIS with 400,000 shares of AOL stock, which
  at the current price of about $37 per share works out to around
  $15 million. Not too shabby.

  But wait, it gets better. Last week, AOL announced that it has
  purchased GNN (Global Network Navigator) from O'Reilly &
  Associates for $11 million ($9 million in stock, $2 million in
  cash). And then, since GNN doesn't include any serious searching
  tools, AOL bought WebCrawler, one of the better Web full text
  search engines. Developed by Brian Pinkerton of the University of
  Washington, WebCrawler is used by more than 250,000 people each
  week, and it adds more than 2,000 new sites each month to its
  current 29,000 site index. AOL didn't say how much they paid Brian
  for WebCrawler, but I hope he made out well.

  Now, to look back, AOL has also purchased BookLink Technologies
  (makers of Internet client software for Windows) and NaviSoft, a
  company that's coming out with some interesting tools for creating
  Web pages. And of course, AOL's most important acquisition was ANS
  (Advanced Network & Services) in November of 1994, which has one
  of the largest and fastest public data networks (see
  TidBITS-254_).

  So let's put this together. AOL has a heavy-duty network from ANS,
  and alliances with Sprint greatly supplement that connectivity.
  AOL has its own client software (and version 2.6 - with Web access
  provided by code from InterCon's TCP/Connect II - is in testing;
  check the FTP URL below), and thanks to BookLink and NaviSoft, AOL
  has access to more code for both client applications and
  publishing programs. WAIS provides both server software and
  publishing deals.

ftp://ftp.aol.com//mac/Preview/
http://www.booklink.com/
http://www.navisoft.com/index.htm
http://www.wais.com/

  There's no question that AOL has a lot of content, much of which
  hasn't been available on the Internet. I'm curious to see how, or
  if, AOL merges its content with GNN, since although AOL talks up
  GNN pretty heavily, I'm not a big fan. Nonetheless, content isn't
  the issue for AOL right now - what's important to them is
  attention, and that's where GNN and WebCrawler stand to help.

http://www.gnn.com/
http://webcrawler.com/

  Overall, I can't think of any other company that's in such a
  strong position to compete directly with the impending (and well-
  funded) juggernaut of Microsoft Network. Although financial
  dealings aren't my strong point, I also wonder if AOL might be
  putting themselves in a weakened financial position through these
  acquisitions. Still, my bet is that in a few years it will be far
  more costly to assemble this sort of collection. As for how this
  will all shake out, only time will tell, being incapable of
  keeping a secret.

  One minor peeve: With all this Internet activity, why hasn't AOL
  put up a Web server with at least all of these press releases on
  it? Homilies about practicing what you preach come to mind.