AOL’s walled-garden rents destroyed the dot-com partners it hosted

Evidence

The problem with this approach is that it depended on the unusual—indeed insane—conditions of that moment in time. It also sometimes left the partner companies so cash-strapped that they quickly began collapsing (though their generally weak business models were surely a contributing factor, too). Music Boulevard, for example, was gone by 1999; HomeGrocer toppled by 2001. With the level of rents being asked, the walled garden turned out to be fairly poisonous for its resident saplings. — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 736

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: AOL’s closed pay-for-play garden lost to the open Internet’s full variety — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 747; AOL pivoted from ad-free service to monetizing its user base as an attention merchant — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 727; Platforms replace markets with fiefdoms and profit with cloud rent

Broader Connections

• Platforms replace markets with fiefdoms and profit with cloud rent #epitomizes (0.85)
• AOL pivoted from ad-free service to monetizing its user base as an attention merchant #expands (0.78) — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 727