AOL Moving Executives, Headquarters To New York – washingtonpost.com
The company said that while senior executives would depart for Manhattan, most of the 4,000 employees at the Dulles campus would remain. The shift is the latest step in the company’s transformation from a provider of dial-up Internet access to one focused on online advertising.
While I’m disappointed that the Dulles area may lose a bunch of jobs, I can’t say that I’m sorry to see AOL start to pull out of our area. I say, “good riddance, you miserable failures”. This is a company that for a while was synonymous with “the internet”. Your average American didn’t “go online”, they “went on AOL”. Never mind that the day AOL merged with Time Warner is generally considered the day the internet boom died. These guys were so entrenched as number 1 that it’s amazing how clueless they turned out to be.
I would warn Google and the other companies that AOL’s entrance into the online advertising world probably means that the business is going to be changing significantly very soon, but I’m pretty sure they already know. And don’t think I mean that AOL will drive the change. I mean that AOL throwing their hat in the ring probably means it’s time to move to the bigger and better ring you’ve been building down the street.
Anyway, I don’t want to lose area jobs. But I would like to see the Dulles area get a flagship company that doesn’t symbolize everything that’s wrong with the internet.