What IS it with greed? It's this disgusting circle. The more you give into it, the more you are trapped by it. This is something I think would be fairly obvious to most folks. The catch is, most folks have forgotten that greed is a relatively bad thing. Sure, it's okay to be somewhat greedy some of the time, but "more" doesn't always equal "better". Just ask Ken Lay - he was running a super-powerful energy company that was basically dictating the United States' energy policy to the guy in the Oval Office, buuuut he got greedy - way too greedy. To most experts, it looks like he decided that he wanted to cash out a mess of his stock ($150 million worth) but not before he drove up the price by saying how the company was going to go through the roof. Then, his company declared bankrupcy and he made $150 million in stock disappear. Now, the Federal Government wants his ass to testify and he's declared the Fifth (i.e. he won't say anything on the grounds that it might incriminate him).
See what greed can get you when it's taken to the extreme? Sure it doesn't happen to everybody who is greedy, but that's not my point. Even in greed there should be balance - the idea that you can be greedy to a certain degree - but not to the extent where extreme reprecussions result where you and others are harmed. In Ken Lay's example, he KNEW was hurting his company, his employees, the people who owned stock in his company as well as his customers. But, he did it anyway.
Let's look at the biggest entertainment company in the world. AOL/TIME/WARNER is an Internet/Publishing/Movie/Television Empire in the truest sense. They run the biggest Internet Service Provider ("So easy, no wonder it's number one!"), publish the single most recognized weekly news magazine in the world (Time Magazine), distribute some of the most successful movies of all time (The first Harry Potter movie made over $300 million in the American movie theaters ALONE) and they run their own TV Network!
What disgusts me most of all is that, THAT'S NOT ENOUGH FOR THEM!! They have to also rely on dirty little tricks to make EVEN MORE money. For instance, they advertise like mad inside their ISP - as in, you log in to get your mail, but before you can, you are asked if you want to buy this book or this video. In fact, from what I have heard, AOL plasters adds anywhere it can. It's like cable TV where you pay to see adds flashed at you. It's absurd. $24 a month is what they like to charge for unlimited access. However, they do have cheaper plans available going for as cheap as $5 a month for 3 hours of use a month. Let's give AOL the benefit of the doubt and say they charge all of their members just $5 a month (but remember, many, if not most, of their customers pay more) - multiply that times the number of subscribers AOL has (According to their corporate web site, more than 30 million) and you discover AOL takes in over $150 million a month! That's the same amount of money the first Harry Potter movie took in after about ten days in theaters - In case you're curious, that approaches $1 billion a year! And that's the conservative figure! By some estimates, they take in closer to $8 billion a year from subsribers.
I quote many of my fellow Internauts when I say WTF!
Now, with closer to 8 billion dollars a year, (JUST from ISP subscribers monthly fees - not including money made from their advertising!) you'd think they could offer some more services for free. Well, they do. AOL Instant Messenger is a handy (if brainless) little app that allows anyone, whether they subscribe to AOL or not, to send Instant Messages across the Internet for free. Because it's a dumb little app and is compatible with AOL's main system, (i.e. AIM users can send AOL users IMs) it is the IM network of choice. Of course, AOL can't allow themselves to NOT make money off of something. For all users of the free AIM network who use their AIM application to access the AIM network, there are ads displayed on the application itself. So, even then, users still have to pay in that they are advertised to.
Now, the Microsoft Network, a competing Internet Service Provider, also has an Instant Messenger network as does Yahoo (they only provide web-based Internet services). Many people use these other networks out of convenience or protest against AOL's empire. For some stupid reason, none of these companies wants to face the fact that these instant messaging networks is compatible with each other. MSN and Yahoo, however, are willing to let third party applications to use their IM network (MultiCity used to be free, but Trillian still is). MSN and Yahoo see no direct money (that I know of) from third party applications using their networks, but they let it happen anyway. AOL, surprise, surprise, does not allow anyone to use their IM network. Why is this? Their official policy is that it's a security risk to allow other companies' applications access to their network. If that's the case, then they should make it easier for third party companies to produce applications that don't pose a security threat. AOL doesn't even try to work out some sort of licensing deal which would allow Trillian to access their network for a small fee. (If Trillian started charging a $1 or $2 a month, no one would flinch and the totals would add up.)
That's only if they want to seem like they really care about Internet users in general. The fact of the matter is, they don't care about anything but making more money. And after ALL the money AOL alone makes, (remember somewhere between $1 billion and $8 billion a year from SUBSCRIBERS ALONE) you'd think they could pull back a little and share the wealth...
Here's my suggestion, boycott AOL and all of it's companies until AOL shares itself with other users. Here is a list of AOL owned sites/ services and their reasonable alternatives:
AOL-owned company | Reasonable NON-AOL-owned alternative |
America OnLine & Compuserve | AT&T Worldnet service or Prodigy Internet |
AOL Instant Messenger & ICQ (another another IM network AOL owns) | Yahoo Instant Messenger or Trillian |
Mapquest | Maporama.com |
Moviefone | Fandango |
Netscape | MSIE (sadly) or Opera |
Spinner/WinAmp | Real Media/any number of mp3 players |
So, there you have it. We can beat the system, but only if we consciously avoid it.
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