If you think blind people are the only ones having problems with AOL's
online service, consider the following article.  It appears that AOL Time
Warner, which brings us such things as movies, music, magazines, CNN, and
the Winamp MP3 player finds that it can't live with AOL for delivering
e-mail.  I personally don't want access to something so unreliable.

Kelly


The Wall Street Journal

march 22, 2002


AOL's Latest Internal Woe: 'You've Got Mail' -- 'Oops, No You Don't'

By MATTHEW ROSE and MARTIN PEERS
Staff Reporters of THE WALL STREET  JOURNAL

NEW YORK -- America Online is the world's most successful Internet
service provider -- except, apparently, in its own house.

In a humbling reversal, AOL Time Warner Inc. is retreating from a
top-level directive that required the divisions of the old Time Warner to
convert to an e-mail system based on AOL software and run by America
Online's giant public server computers in Virginia.

The drive to get all the company's 82,000 employees to use AOL e-mail was
an attempt to give symbolic resonance to the marriage of AOL and Time
Warner, the largest corporate merger in U.S. history and perhaps the
most-scrutinized litmus test for the marriage of the old and new
economies.

Instead, management got months of complaints from both senior and junior
executives in the divisions involved, who said the e-mail system,
initially designed for consumers, wasn't appropriate for business use.
Among the problems cited: The e-mail software frequently crashed,
staffers weren't able to send messages with large attachments, they were
often kicked offline without warning, and if they tried to send messages
to large groups of users they were labeled as spammers and locked out of
the system. Sometimes, e-mails were just plain lost in the AOL etherworld
and never found. And if there was an out-of-office reply function, most
people couldn't find it.

The various types of e-mail software used by employees aren't the same as
those used by America Online subscribers at home. Instead, the divisions
customized AOL products, such as those from its Netscape unit.

Time Inc., the U.S.'s largest magazine publisher and a heavy e-mail user,
was the company's worst-hit division. Late last year, ad sales executives
in Entertainment Weekly's Chicago office were trying to e-mail a
presentation to a major advertising agency. Because the system has
trouble handling large attachments, the e-mail didn't arrive. At the last
minute the office had to send a staff member in a cab with a printed
version.

Norman Pearlstine, Time Inc.'s editor in chief, recalls that e-mails
containing final page proofs of some magazines never made it to his
computer because they were routed to an old e-mail address. He also
inadvertently offended then-People magazine Managing Editor Carol Wallace
by failing to reply to her e-mails. He just hadn't received them.

"The system didn't work well for heavy data and graphics users," says
Edward Adler, an AOL Time Warner senior vice president and corporate
spokesman.

But there was more. Staffers groused they had to log onto their office
computers using a portable electronic number tag that sometimes broke;
and they grumbled they were no longer able to use portable e-mail
devices, such as BlackBerries, because they weren't compatible with AOL.
In late January, executives at Warner Music tried to alert employees to
problems with the new system. "2% of e-mail is being lost," the internal
e-mail read. "If you are expecting critical e-mail, you may want to
follow up with the sender."

Apparently weary of the complaints, at a regular meeting of top
executives Wednesday, the company decided to allow divisions to use any
e-mail system they want, including those from International Business
Machines Corp. and archrival Microsoft Corp. If the divisions choose
outside products, their e-mail systems likely won't be housed on America
Online's servers in Dulles, Va. Some members of the company's tech staff
have dubbed the reclamation plan "Project Phoenix."

Divisions will now be able to pick "the system that better suits their
individual business needs," says Mr. Adler.

The company spent almost a year trying to make the system work. At Warner
Bros., for instance, studio chief Barry Meyer put a stop to AOL Mail last
year after the rollout began at the studio. Mr. Meyer decided to wait for
a better version of Netscape software, which became available earlier
this year. But a technical glitch suspended rollout of that version last
week.

The reversal is particularly awkward for Robert Pittman, AOL Time
Warner's co-chief operating officer, who had pushed through the move to
use AOL's e-mail. Mr. Pittman wasn't available for an interview, but Mr.
Adler, the spokesman, says that divisional CEOs had agreed with Mr.
Pittman's decision.

The initial idea for communal e-mail was driven in part by cost. By using
its own products, such as AOL Mail or Netscape's software, the company
could save millions of dollars because it no longer would have to pay
license fees to other software companies and could reduce staff. Then
there was the matter of corporate pride: "It's true that it was a policy
decision by the AOL Time Warner leadership that we should set a good
example by using our own products," says a top information-technology
executive at one of the divisions.

Mr. Pearlstine of Time Inc. says he agreed with the idea because the
unit's existing e-mail system was out of date and because he thought it
would be better served through its corporate sibling. But he says
problems arose as soon as he started using it. He began to lobby against
the system, and he wasn't alone: Time Inc. Executive Vice President Ann
Moore buttonholed AOL Time Warner Chief Executive Gerald Levin after a
meeting in the Time Inc. building to complain about the system, according
to two people Ms. Moore later told. Ms. Moore couldn't be reached for
comment. A spokesman for Mr. Levin declined to comment.

Employees of the old Time Warner, already resentful of their corporate
bosses at AOL, saw the imposition of AOL's e-mail as corporate arrogance.
When computers crashed in the Washington bureau of Time magazine due to
the e-mail software, staffers sometimes sung out, "So easy to use, no
wonder it's number one," an ironic reference to America Online's ad
slogan.

The e-mail problems have led many staffers to resume pre-Internet habits.
Employees say they are faxing and using Federal Express more than before.
They also are picking up the phone or wandering down the corridors in
search of human contact. "If all goes well, we'll never have to use
e-mail and we'll have to start talking to each other again," says one
magazine writer.

--Julia Angwin contributed to this article.

Write to Matthew Rose at matthew.rose @wsj.com and Martin Peers at
[log in to unmask]

Updated March 22, 2002


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