>> Oh but it was wonderful! If I remember correctly (and I am sure Mikel can >> tell us) AOL bought the concept from Apple. > > I'm not sure what the concept would do for them since they already existed > and truly haven't changed much. I liked eworld's village look and especially > the sounds. I used it for a while without having a clue as to what "online" > meant.
Christian is just trying to lure me into a lengthy discourse about how America Online was actually a joint venture between Apple and Quantum Computing Services (the latter company eventually became AOL). America Online started life as a spin-off of AppleLink, an online forum used by Apple to communicate with its service organizations, dealers, and developers. Eventually there was some demand for those services outside that community. Thus a joint venture dedicated to creating AppleLink Personal Edition was born. Apple eventually traded most of its rights to the code for stock in what became AOL. Eventually, Apple found itself licensing later generations of that self-same code back in an attempt to create eWorld. eWorld was moderately successful; however, Apple was never dedicated to marketing it. Which would have been hideously expensive. As was eventually demonstrated by AOL having to restate practically all of its previously alleged earnings. So, since MSN was seemingly similarly failing and thus Apple no longer felt that they had to have a "Me too!" online services division *and* Apple was in it's every 2 to 3 year "Imminent Death of Apple" media frenzy followed by a cost cutting purge of products, eWorld went away. ##### Of course, my view of history is biased as I (and a few other people then at InterCon) wrote the 1.0 and 1.1 versions of both AOL and eWorld's web browsers. InterCon and a dozen-plus other small'sh Internet-related software companies were killed by Netscape's abuse of its then monopoly position in the Web client and server market. Many of us still chuckle at the legal lunacy that allowed Netscape to go whining to the government about dying from blows received from the same sword. mikel -- To unsubscribe: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> archives: <http://www.mail-archive.com/entourage-talk%40lists.letterrip.com/> old-archive: <http://www.mail-archive.com/entourage-talk%40lists.boingo.com/>
