Web 2.0 Con: Jonathan Miller, CEO, AOL

One of the biggest bombshells in Jonathan Miller’s chat with John Battelle — AOL is rebranding to … drumroll … AOL. Dan Farber provides Miller’s explanation “that AOL was changing its official name from America Online to ‘AOL,’ solving the problem of taking the brand internationally without offending those countries that don’t want to have an America Online in their midst.”
Miller was less forthcoming about any possible deal with Microsoft, shifting the conversation instead to why AOL matters to Microsoft, Yahoo and Google. “We are the largest swing voter and could go different ways and people are aware of that.” Farber pairs that non-answer with one from Microsoft’s Yusef Mehdi and comes away still thinking “that something is underway between the two.” But Miller also said he sees consumer-oriented Yahoo as a primary competitor.
Miller continued to sing the AOL video theme song. “It’s a real turning point for video consumption over IP, and we want to do a lot more of it. Today we have a lot more video than anybody else … and we’ll take Weblogs into print and video as well.”
Richard MacManus has detailed notes. When Miller was asked why AOL passed on Ask Jeeves, he said, “I couldn’t make the math work.”

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