• The New York Times, Friday, October 19, 2007 10:45 AM

AOL is in trouble again (or rather, still), but this time, it's worse: 1,200 layoffs and reports that more than a dozen AOL products are going to be shut down. What's the future of the Time Warner company?

The result is the dissolution of the AOL brand as we know it. AOL CEO Randy Falco says the fault of the former regime was to turn AOL.com into a Web version of "the all-in-one" service the company tried to provide in its former iteration. The Web portal strategy at large has failed with the rise of blogging, user-generated content and customization tools like RSS feeds. So, AOL's next plan is to become more like Google: a network of sites and services comprising a little bit of everything: blogs, widgets, email, advertising services, etc.

The new AOL strategy is vastly different to the one laid out by Yahoo, it's rival and fellow beleaguered portal. CEO Jerry Yang told investors that Yahoo's strategy is to focus on services making it the default home page for users' online experiences. AOL, it seems, plans to throw lots of stuff at the wall and see what sticks.

Read the whole story at The New York Times »