The companies that develop valuable products and know-how will find the Web a more congenial atmosphere, because they’ll have better technology and lower costs than they’ll be able to get in a deal with a proprietary online service.
Predictor: Modahl, Mary
Prediction, in context:In a 1995 article in Wired magazine, Mark Nollinger quotes research consultant Mary Modahl. He writes: ”If the attraction of The Microsoft Network isn’t strong enough to lure away AOL’s users and partners, there’s a more tantalizing suitor waiting down the road: the Internet itself. With the advent of the World Wide Web, as Forrester Research analyst Mary Modahl points out, standard technologies make it possible to unbundle the three components of an online service – network, interface, and content – allowing companies to compete at each level. That should result in lower access prices, better interfaces, and, most ominously, content providers abandoning AOL for the Web. ‘Over time, we think the companies that develop valuable products and know-how will find the Web a more congenial atmosphere,’ Modahl asserts, ‘because they’ll have better technology and lower costs than they’ll be able to get in a deal with a proprietary online service.'”
Date of prediction: September 1, 1995
Topic of prediction: Economic structures
Subtopic: General
Name of publication: Wired
Title, headline, chapter name: America, Online! America Online Has Been on a Rocket Ride, Now it Would Like to Morph Into an ‘Interactive Service Company’ Before Microsoft and the Web Eat its Lunch
Quote Type: Direct quote
Page number or URL of document at time of study:
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/3.09/aol_pr.html
This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Stotler, Larry