Never underestimate Steve Case
Dave Winer has a great piece on AOL, with the unforgettable double entendre: "AOL was the finger in the dyke of the Internet." That's one confused little Dutch boy (not you, Dave, but "dike" is the modern usage and "dyke" is currently usually used as a slang term for something else entirely).
But, more importantly, Dave's right about AOL not getting the Net. What it did get, and that was much more important to its success, was that it knew and knows it needs to be a media company.
At a party last week I met the former CEO of The Well, Maria Alioto. We talked about her experience. A total parallel to AOL. Good start, probably was necessary for the Web to get going. The core of the West Coast Web. The meeting place for the future staff of Wired and EFF. All good things. But in the mid-90s when she came on, it had no future. As AOL had no future when Time-Warner was snookered into taking their stock.
Moral of the story: Never underestimate Steve Case.
Second moral: He's like Columbo, he makes it easy for you to underestimate him.
Folks, AOL has never been about the Net. It has been about being as easy-as-TV to use and that's it. A huge portion of its users are 40+, too old to "get" the rawness of the Net, but drawn to the ease of communication provided by the Net.