Return to sender: AOL drops own email
Published: 24 Mar 2002 07:31 GMT
America Online, the world's most popular Internet service, seems to be losing its home-field advantage.
Executives at AOL Time Warner, the parent company of AOL, are no longer requiring its many high-profile divisions to exclusively use an email service developed by AOL's Netscape subsidiary. This flies in the face of a directive established last May that required all AOL Time Warner employees to use AOL technology as their corporate email service.
Since the merger between AOL and Time Warner, executives have been trying to weave AOL's influence throughout the company's diverse array of media and entertainment companies. In the case of using AOL email, the move was a gesture of solidarity behind the service and also offered potential cost savings by eliminating licensing fees for corporate email software, such as Microsoft's Outlook or IBM's Lotus Notes.
Instead, some AOL Time Warner divisions, including magazine publisher Time and Warner Music Group, were required to use a customised product developed by AOL's Netscape.
AOL Time Warner spokeswoman Tricia Primrose said the Netscape product was developed to meet specific needs of the company's various divisions.
"Unfortunately, it didn't work for everybody," Primrose said. "So we decided to give everybody the choice that met their needs. Some will stay with it, some will move to others."
AOL Time Warner divisions now are permitted to license email management software from non-affiliated companies, such as Microsoft and IBM. The change in policy was first reported by the Wall Street Journal.
AOL Time Warner employees previously contacted were quick to complain about being forced to use AOL's email system. Employees' complaints mainly centred on the system's shortcomings for daily business tasks, such as difficulty in sending large attachments and a reliance on cumbersome security features, according to a AOL Time Warner employee who spoke under anonymity.
AOL Time Warner executives have been trying to show how the marriage between the companies would chart a new course for the media empire. The company has taken steps to reduce costs by consolidating the technical management of all its Web sites, including those from Time magazines and Warner Bros. Executives have also been touting the company's ability to cross-promote its offline, such as movies and television shows, to AOL's Internet audience.
However, most of these cross-over benefits have been anecdotal. Furthermore, AOL Time Warner's latest financial earnings report showed that the AOL division, under fire for its lacklustre financial growth, gained $138m worth of advertisements from other AOL Time Warner divisions during the fourth quarter 2001. That spending helped the AOL division report less of a revenue loss from the sour advertising environment.
News.com's John Borland contributed to this report.
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