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You've Got Problems!

By: Kate RockwoodThu Mar 20, 2008 at 11:26 AM
A brief history of AOL's misfortunes.

Dead Man Walking magazine/124/dead-man-walking.html Infographic: AOL’s Year of Pain You've Got Problems! magazine/124/youve-got-problems.html AOL's Greatest Hits magazine/124/aols-greatest-hits.html

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September 2003

"AOL" is scratched from the AOL Time Warner's name following a board vote. The stock symbol returns to TWX from AOL a month later.

February 2004

AOL is the official sponsor of the Super Bowl halftime show in which Janet Jackson suffers a "wardrobe malfunction."

March 2004

Google launches Google Maps, to compete with AOL's MapQuest. MapQuest's traffic flatlines while Google sees 135% annualized growth.

April 2005

AOL launches AOL Internet Phone. Eighteen months later, with just 2,000 subscribers, it is shuttered.

May 2006

AOL launches AIM Pages, its own social networking site, after News Corp. buys MySpace. AIM Pages fails to carve out a niche, and after about a year, it is merged with the old AOL member directory.

July 2006

AOL execs, struggling to craft a new mission statement, settle for vagueness: "To serve the world's most engaged community."

August 2006

AOL releases private search data for more than 650,000 users. Lawsuit ensues. CTO resigns.

August 2006

AOL announces it will open all of its content to the public for free, committing to an ad-based business model, years after Yahoo, Google, and others.

November 2006

After posting his third consecutive quarter of better than 40% ad-revenue growth, CEO Jon Miller is fired. NBC vet Randy Falco takes over.

January 2007

Time Warner's stock, after climbing 44% in five months, tracking AOL's ad-revenue growth, peaks at $23 a share and begins to fall.

April 2007

A redesigned AOL home page draws criticism for its striking similarity to Yahoo's, which launched in 2006.

May 2007

AOL's search page, long powered by Google, with ads served by Google, is redesigned to look exactly like Google.

August 2007

Time Warner announces AOL's second-quarter online-ad revenue grew only 16%, well below the industry average.

September 2007

Falco announces he's moving AOL's official headquarters from Dulles, Virginia, to New York.

October 2007

Falco announces a plan for 2,000 layoffs. On the fateful day -- dubbed Bloody Tuesday by bloggers -- 750 employees in Dulles get the ax.

January 2008

Jeff Bewkes, who had overseen the AOL division as COO and president of Time Warner, is elected CEO of TWX.

February 2008

AOL announces weak sales, and Time Warner hints that it might want to sell. With Microsoft targeting Yahoo for takeover, two of the most likely buyers are suddenly much less likely.

Topics:

Technology, Careers, online business, Employee Termination, AOL LLC, Google Inc., Time Warner Inc., Yahoo! Inc., Randy Falco

From Issue 124 | April 2008

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Recent Comments | 6 Total

August 20, 2009 at 4:27am by Maria Montana

I tend to see things going this way as well. I'm certain this won't stop at drug use and party behavior (which is actually a ridiculous qualifier as some of the best employees I've seen partied hard on the weekends). What happens when you're denied a job because of some political or religious views you espouse on blog that the HR person doesn't agree with? You know, the kind of information they aren't allowed to ask you in an interview setting. If it can't be asked in an interview they shouldn't be allowed to go looking for that info online. But, I guess you can always make your profiles private so only people you want to see them can.