AOL Cleans House

What once was considered an Internet powerhouse, seems to be dwindling away. AOL is getting rid of (or has already) more than 50 of its projects according to Silicon Alley Insider. We knew about AOL Journals and AOL Hometown, but this list is huge.

The dead projects fall into a number of categories including video, audio, messaging, social, toolbars, desktop, safety, mobile, and email. Check SIA's article for Yahoo! to eBay. Speaking of Yahoo!, there have been rumors floating around of a possible AOL/Yahoo! merger, but they are just that - rumor. It's hard to see many reasons Yahoo! would want to take on the AOL mess, but some say
"As far as the list itself: We're hard-pressed to find projects we think AOL is foolish to be dropping," says SAI's Peter Kafka. "We're far from convinced that its newish strategy, which is more or less dependent on the fortunes of its Platform A third-party ad network, will pan out. But we don't see how keeping any of these items helps the company move forward."

You have to wonder how much wasted time and money went into this massive list of dead projects. I guess it's not as much as would've continued to be wasted had they stayed around. Otherwise they probably wouldn't be dead.