Thread · HN Continuity

I worked there around that time, and a little later. The company had recently ish gotten independent and was actually pretty optimistic. The basic plan was to use the clearly dying dialup business to fund new businesses in media and ads, and there was even hope that the mail and search stuff could be turned around. I think the ads and media stuff broadly worked, most of the media businesses are still going though they were divested by AOL and later Yahoo. The ads stuff did ultimately have a shelf life as the industry consolidated more on Google and Facebook but that was many years away from 2014. Mail and search were eventually merged into their yahoo counterparts post merger.

People at AOL realized how the brand was that of a "wow you still exist" so were pretty good at not putting it too intrusively on new or acquired products. Good for those products, bad for the chances of revitalizing the brand. One of the interesting things post-merger with Yahoo was how much Yahoo people had not adopted the same attitude about their own brand.