Aol. Com: How Steve Case Beat Bill Gates, Nailed the Netheads, and Made Millions in the War for the Web

by Kara Swisher

In 1996, Kara Swisher, then a reporter at The Washington Post, was granted unprecedented access to one of the hottest and most closely watched companies in the world, America Online, Inc. In aol.com , Swisher has written a book that captures the secrets of how AOL beat the competition and became the world's biggest online company. Swisher also reveals the company's behind-the-scenes dealings with Microsoft cofounders Bill Gates and Paul Allen, CompuServe, Prodigy, Netscape, and the Christian Right.Throughout its existence, AOL has repeatedly been written off by the media and the high-tech world. Bill Gates threatened to buy it or bury it. Deep-pocketed competitors such as CompuServe and Prodigy thought little of their smaller rival. And AOL made matters worse by committing a series of public-relations and technical blunders that became front page news and enraged its subscribers.But the company--a "cyber-cockroach"--refused to die. Now, with over eleven million subscribers, AOL is the undisputed leader in the online world, vitally positioned at the nexus of big business, high tech, advertising, and new media. In telling the story of AOL, Swisher also conveys the fascinating history of the online business, which has its origins in the dreams of an eccentric and little-known entrepreneur named Bill Von Meister, whose grand ideas and big spending spawned the fledgling company that would become AOL. But it fell to a young marketing executive named Steve Case to build AOL while fending off an onslaught of wealthier competitors and suitors. Ultimately, as Swisher vividly illustrates, AOL gained supremacy because Case possessed the best vision for his company, establishing AOL as a vibrant virtual community rather than an online shopping center or business tool. Included in that community is an array of enthusiasts, activists, and deviants who at times clash in battles over freedom of expression and family values, a flash point best illustrated here by AOL's fight against the Communications Decency Act.Re-creating all of the major moments in AOL's frenzied history, aol.com is a fascinating and important inside story about the birth of a new medium, the enterprising innovators who are leading it, and the way it is changing our culture.

Genres: Business, Technology, History, Nonfiction

Hardcover

First published June 16, 1998

Reviews

[Kara · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this book back in college for a tech class, and then read it again once before I went to work for AOL. Kara Swisher has a really good way to delve into the facts and dissect all the different pieces of a story. This book is a bit slow going, as it details the entire history of AOL, back from when it was a start up with 3 employees working in some basement of an office building in Virginia. If you're interested in understanding why AOL rose so fast, started collapsing even faster, and moreover why it just WON'T go away, read this book.

[kdj · Rating 4 out of 5]

Engaging, well-researched read. I worked for AOL and appreciated the view through Kara Swisher's lens, and memories it conjured.

[Shan P S · Rating 5 out of 5]

Kara Swisher has written this book like a long article. It is easy to read, and focuses on the topic (AOL). The history of the company is interlaced with the beginnings of the internet, and other software companies of the time. While AOL is at the center of the book, there are many other interesting developments that are covered - how competitors fared, how established companies like Microsoft and Apple tackled the internet, and legislation. Since this book was written in 1999, well before the dot com boom, it captures the uncertainty of the Internet - there were a lot of skeptics and a lot of tech dreamers those days, and no one knew how it would evolve.
I would recommend this book to anyone interested in the history of technology.

[Andrew · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great book,
Well written, leading to a fascinating read, making me feel part of a time of which I may of being alive but not alert, a time which appears to have shaped today.

[Joe White · Rating 4 out of 5]

review 10/8/14 : aol.inc Kara Swisher Times Business
4 stars - conditionally - strictly a biographical and financial focus.

This book is based on interviews and articles from a significant number of the people responsible for bringing AOL public and continuing to operate it throughout the book's publication in 1999. Opponent personalities are highlighted, as well as 3rd party participants such as congressmen, judges, lawyers, etc.

The value in the text is that it represents a summarized history of over 10 years of operation of a significant communication technology company in the 90's that foreshadowed the global graph data-centric Facebook type operators . Unfortunately, because of its focus on the personalities and financial pressures and manipulations of stock, loans, and business mergers, there is only a superficial mention of AOL's operating characteristics and configuration. By this I mean that there is no discourse on the configuration and operation of a dial up ISP type of operator in this significant decade, prior to the emergence of widespread cable and phone line server connections.

I say that this is unfortunate because a significant number of readers today, of a history that is approaching 20 years old, have never had the experience of operating a character based terminal, or dialing up a phone number and hearing the mesmerizing growl of the modem handshake. Current and future users will fail to grasp a lifestyle in which the internet for all practical purposes did not yet exist, and dialing up direct connections at very low modem speeds for a high cost of minimal interaction time will not believe the connection limitations and costs compared to the current accepted always-on connectability. This current generation of web designers and operators also will not have experienced the design and operational constraints that early pioneer companies faced.

While there may be separate parallel texts that provide this operational history, I would have preferred that this book provide a links type listing of references to operational design, or could have added up to 50+ pages providing some internal operational details.

Near the end, this book has at least 2 significant chapters that deal with the freedom of the internet - a big struggle here, and the case taken through Congress that was overturned by the Supreme Court as unconstitutional that would have led to severe restrictions on internet speech freedoms, and added a horrific burden to ISP's to be naughty-or-nice police.

[Eric Lamb]

Provides a nice history of how AOL started and the beginning of the Internet in regards to the old school walled gardens like Prodigy & Compuserve. In terms of "Where we come from" this book is a nice goto for insight.

[Ryan · Rating 3 out of 5]

I worked for AOL when a lot of this books history was being made. It's fun to relive some of those old moments and understand the back story that drove many corporate decisions.

[Jim · Rating 4 out of 5]

"My AOL friends say this book is quite accurate and it