• by Masha Geller , August 14, 2003

Earlier this week, as just about every news outlet in the world reported, AOL chief Jon Miller suggested in an internal email that AOLTW drop AOL from the company name, and it looks like the board will vote to do exactly that when it meets next month.

Can someone please tell me why such a huge issue was made out of this name change? It seems to be the least of the company's laundry list of problems. A quick recap, if I may.

Yesterday, AOL Time Warner filed a quarterly report with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, which said that advertising at its online unit and cable TV operations is expected to be weak for the rest of 2003. According to the filing, the lowered expectations are attributable to decreased benefits from "prior contract sales."

Moreover, AOL just can't seem to stop losing members, both domestically and internationally. In addition to consumers abandoning the service in droves, the Securities and Exchange Commission has just launched a probe into whether America Online has been improperly inflating its domestic subscriber numbers and last week the company said that AOL Latin America is no longer counting as subscribers 21%, or 170,000 nonpaying customers in Brazil, Mexico and Argentina.

The company also said last week that it is abandoning its strategy of making major changes to its AOL software as part of a single annual release in favor of rolling out fresh upgrades as soon as the new features are ready - a strategy no one thinks will bring any results.

And, as of Aug. 11, AOL has faced about 40 purported class-action and shareholder lawsuits, both against it and in some cases its executives.

What's in a name? Call it what you will, but the words "sinking ship" sure do come to mind.