America Online changes name
America Online is changing its name to AOL Inc. in an effort to build a bigger international following, especially in China.
Jonathan Miller, head of the Time Warner Internet division, mentioned the name change on stage Thursday at the Web 2.0 conference in San Francisco in response to a question about the company's plans for expanding in China.
It appears the company didn't think having "America" in its name would go over so well there.
 Jonathan Miller, CEO, AOL |
AOL leaves "America" behindMiller said he instigated another big name change at the company -- parent Time Warner's decision two years ago to drop AOL from its name after the merger had soured.
"We had to do something significant to show we were moving on," he said.
Miller shared some other interesting facts during his on-stage interview. One was that AOL distributed more than 660 million CDs over the years to promote its service. It has quit sending them to the relief, I'm sure, of many who were tired of getting them. He also said AOL had "squandered" the trust of its customers, but that it had more to do with falling out of touch with what they wanted than the barrage of CDs.
Miller also said that AOL had at one time considered buying search firm Ask Jeeves, which InterActivCorp acquired in March for $1.85 billion. "I don't know that I want to fight it out with other folks on algorithmic web search," he said.
"The math for us didn't make sense," he added.
