Reston, Va.: Great article, Alec. Can you explain what kind of work goes in to a story like that? It seems like the product of many, many interviews.

Alec Klein: Thanks. I began covering AOL in the summer of 2000--and yes, a lot of work goes into a story like this. I've interviewed hundreds of people and spent countless hours reviewing confidential company documents.

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Herndon, Va.: Mr. Klein, thank you for revealing the inner workings of AOL for us. I have been on AOL for over 10 years and used their message boards to get information on astronomy and numerous other topics. As the World Wide Web blossomed in 1996 I built my web site there. But AOL’s behavior over the years often puzzled me.

I always thought of advertising as a simple fee for service type of business. But in AOL’s hands it apparently got transformed into a no holds barred contact sport.

AOL did not seem to understand that when people like me go on-line we are on a mission. The last thing we want is a lot of overbearing ads –- especially pop-ups. (Of course I quickly located the option to disable pop-ups.)

I did read the small ad buttons and occasionally clicked to learn more. One ad offered a digital camera. The description was vague but since there was a money-back guarantee, I bought it. It was cute and emblazoned with the AOL logo. Using it convinced me that the time had come to go digital, but when I found that I could get more for my money elsewhere, I returned it.

No, AOL is not my favorite shopping destination despite their efforts.

Alec Klein: One of the interesting things about AOL is that, in the end, it was the victim of its own success. The company pushed so hard and aggressively to generate revenue--but that aggressively ultimately backfired when many of the companies it did business with collapsed.

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Washington, D.C.: Alec,

Thanks for bringing this to light. This is pathetic and the people are pathetic. I have to ask you, though, as a person -- do you want to see these people rot in jail? Because I do. They took money from hard- working people (i.e., people who bought the stock) and feigned their numbers (no matter how little, the fact is they did it to pump their stock and get the Time merger complete) and then put that money in their greedy, grubby pockets. Personally, I'd like five minutes alone with some of these idiots.

What are your feelings?

Alec Klein: I think it's important to point out that there are many good people at AOL--indeed, I would say most of them are good people. I would also venture to say that both Myer Berlow and David Colburn, for all their larger-than-life antics, helped AOL become a big success at the turn of the century. But it appears that some officials--especially those who worked in the hard-charging business affairs unit--took it to an extreme.

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Bethesda, Md.: Will AOL survive? It seems that they are trying to adapt to a Broadband world while trying to keep the dial-up customers happy. Can the two co-exist or will AOL become another Earthlink -- just a connection to the Internet with no custom content. Your opinions about the future?

Alec Klein: Good question. There's a lot of debate about this. AOL, let's not forget, is still a vaunted brand name with a considerable market advantage over its competitors. But it's struggling to find a way to move from dial-up to broadband. What's more, it is still operating under the cloud of twin federal investigations--by the SEC and Justice Department. So it may take some time before it reemerges.

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Gaithersburg, Md.: Do you think recent mgmt changes will make a different in the business practices at AOL?

Alec Klein: I think the company is hoping to change the culture at AOL. Already, many of the top officials have been removed, and business affairs, the aggressive unit that structured many of the exotic deals of the late '90s, has been disbanded. Even more, the sense of bravado seems to have diminished as AOL's star has dropped.

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Washington, D.C.: I figure you're probably on par with Satan around the AOL complex in Dulles. How did you get people to open up to you, grant candid interviews, etc.?

Alec Klein: You'd be surprised how many people are willing to talk to a reporter when they feel they need to expose something that isn't right. Also, I still have many friends at AOL, and the company has been very cordial.

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Milwaukee, Wisc.: Were the round tripping deals fraud or merely the way companies were doing business in the Internet boom?

Alec Klein: The SEC and Justice Department will ultimately make that call. What we know is that AOL pushed deals to the edge, looking for every advantage. It may very well turn out that some of the practices will be associated with the dot-com boom and bust.

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Alexandria, Va.: So what's next for Steve Case? He can't be happy sitting on the sidelines. Any truth to the rumors that he might try to buy AOL back?

Alec Klein: Steve Case, as you probably know, recently stepped down as chairman of AOL Time Warner. Just last year, as he was fighting to save his job, he confided to his friends that he wanted to buy AOL back and run it himself. That appears less likely, given his fall from grace. Also, Dick Parsons, the CEO of AOL Time Warner, has said he has no plans to spin off the troubled online division.

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Belmond, Iowa: Wow! A great article on hubris and greed. I don't normally follow business affairs with such interest but your article sucked me in. What happened to Colburn and Berlow? Where are they now? In jail? (one would hope in Colburn's case... just kidding.)

Alec Klein: Last summer, Colburn was locked out of his office and summarily fired. He has been keeping a very low profile since. Myer Berlow was effectively marginalized at the company when he was put in a consulting position, but given little to do.

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Virginia: A couple of HR folks at my companies mentioned how arrogant ex-AOL employees are -- underdressed; missing the time like it was nothing; slacking on the chair; talk down; etc.

Alec Klein: These are well chronicled stories. When AOL began to falter, it was left with few corporate friends because it had treated so many business partners roughly.

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Ashburn, Va.: Abuse of employees, clients, customers and partners is tolerated where incompetent managers can give the illusion of hitting marks and goals. The shareholder costs of this "management practice" in lost productivity, destroyed careers of high value employees, and failed product lines is enormous. Exposing and eliminating this disease is key to returning AOL to long term financial health. Do you see your book as a diagnosis and rallying point for a cure?

Alec Klein: I didn't write the book as a cure for what ails AOL. I think, though, it's a reflection of the times, a tale of the wild ride that we lived through. Maybe, in that, there is a lesson about the practice of business.

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Silver Spring, Md.: Why do you think Colburn and Berlow are being held responsibile for these deals? Shouldn't the CFOs be responsible? They signed off on the deals, as far as I know both Mike Kelly and Joe Ripp are still with the company?

Alec Klein: I have reviewed hundreds of pages of internal AOL documents, which show that Colburn and Berlow were not the only executives who signed off on business deals. It's true that Colburn was the final sign-off, but several other AOL officials were involved in the process. I'm not convinced that Colburn will be singled out as the only AOLer responsible for these deals.

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Grand Rapids, Mich.: Really good article! Has the corporate culture changed under Mr. Pittman and how has dealing with AOL changed with the management shakeups?

Alec Klein: Thanks. Bob Pittman, like Steve Case and Jerry Levin, is gone. The company has already begun to look different in their absence. Dick Parsons, the CEO, has put in his own people, mainly Time Warner people, who are trying to instill a different culture.

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Alexandria, Va.: What do the AOL folks think of Dick Parsons these days? He says he's not going to spin off AOL. Do they think he can revive the overall company

Alec Klein: I think the jury is still out on Dick Parsons. He's generally liked at the company--he's considered an affable teddy bear--but patience will wear thin if things don't turn around next year. He's bought himself some breathing room by saying 2003 is a transitional period.

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Bethesda, Md.: Great article. However, I don't think the greed and heavy-handed tactics in this case are unique to AOL. Remember, AOL is probably our hometown version of Enron and Worldcom. I hope they make it out of this mess okay with better corporate "manners."

Alec Klein: You are not alone. The huge drop in AOL's stock has devastated the savings and retirement of many employees and investors. Along the way, Dick Parsons, the CEO, has talked about the importance of restoring integrity.

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Arlington, Va.: Reading your article, I was more than a little stunned by the amount of VC that AOL ate up. Would you go so far to say that AOL helped hasten the dot-com bust, and thereby its own demise, by crippling the very companies it relied on to support it? Could we have ended up with a more diverse, healthier online universe had AOL not seemingly beld so many companies dry? Or was the dot-com crash fated from its inception because of unrealistic expectations?

Alec Klein: I think it was a little of both. AOL, through its aggressive deal making, did hasten the demise of many dot-coms. But the dot-com euphoria was hyped from the beginning.

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Herndon, Va.: I have wondered why my Netscape Browser quit working with AOL. Your article makes it pretty clear that AOL became a partner in Microsoft’s plan to crush Netscape. How did they get away with that? I’m quite sure they could have made their software work with either browser.

Alec Klein: Microsoft got in a good deal of antitrust trouble for its attempt--effective as it was--to trample Netscape. AOL, for its part, offered to help Microsoft if Microsoft helped AOL. Which it did. Ironically, AOL ended up buying Netscape, which now is a shell of its former self.

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Sterling, Va.: I worked for AOL for four years from 1998 to 2001 (but NOT in business affairs). I have long believed that Steve Case's biggest failure was his loss of control over corporate ethics at AOL. I remember him talking at several of our "all-hands" meetings about wanting to make AOL "the most admired and respected company in the world" based on its business practices and corporate responsibility. He really believed in this mission.

Early on Steve established the AOL Foundation to give grants to organizations that were using the Internet in innovative ways for educational purposes. I was among many AOL employees who volunteered their time to help evaluate grant proposals for the Foundation. The Foundation also gave grants to non-profit groups for which AOL employees performed volunteer work. I remember that when I earned a grant of $500 for the Sterling Foundation in Sterling, Virginia, I told my boss in the Member Services division about it. He replied, “Why should I be happy about that?” When I asked what he meant, he said, “That’s my money.” This incident really brought home to me the discrepancy between Steve Case's values and the values of most managers at AOL. Did you get this feeling during your investigation?

Alec Klein: Somewhere along the way, AOL became so powerful and so big that it lost its way. There's almost a sense of Greek tragedy in this--the lure of hubris.

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Gaithersburg, Md.: Any plans for the Post to do a future article on surveying future developments, at AOL, or perhaps another troubled organization? It seems that the bad news of unethical management practices just seems to multiply these days. I am hoping that at some point someone will be able to produce a story that has good news and improvements.

Alec Klein: The Post continues to cover AOL on a day-to-day basis. As for the troubles exploding across corporate America, all I can say is, we hold up the mirror and write what we see, the good and the bad.

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Maryland: Good article. Is AOL a dot.com or a public company? Seemed too many deals went down.

Alec Klein: AOL is a public company, a widely held stock. It's also the world's largest media company, which makes its troubles that much more stunning. After all, it owns such stellar brands as CNN, Time and Warner Bros.

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Bowie, Md.: First of all: Great job, Alec. The excerpt's wonderful.

How long did it take you to do all of the reporting and writing (months, years)?

Alec Klein: Thanks. The story--and the book it's based on--was informed by more than two years of reporting. I wrote the book in about five months.

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Hoboken, N.J.: I worked at a dot com during the "boom" and don't you think it was true that if AOL didn't take the VC money, other companies would have been happy to? There was a lot of "stupid" money in the marketplace in those years ...

Alec Klein: Some AOL officials say as much, and it's probably true to an extent, that if AOL had passed on the VC money, someone else would have readily taken it. The problem was, AOL went further than that at the height of the boom. AOL looked at business partners not as partners but as targets. It sought to extract every last dollar out of a dot-com.

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Herndon, Va.: E-mail was always a major use for AOL. But SPAM, the least credible form of advertising, grew and generated lots of complaints. The AOL response to the problem was weak. Other e-mail providers, such as Hotmail, provided more effective and user friendly controls. (I stayed with AOL mostly because it was “my e-mail address”.) Did Colburn’s team have such control that user wishes were ignored?

Alec Klein: Colburn's team--at least the aggressive members--were thinking mainly about AOL's bottom line, how to generate revenue to give the appearance that the company was maintaining its momentum as it sought to close it merger with Time Warner. In many cases, customers were not a consideration.

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Re: Virginia: Regarding the behavior of ex-AOL employees ... if those people really behave like these HR folks claim, wouldn't you fire them from your company too? Ex-AOL employees may get accused of being lazy and underdressed ... maybe that's why AOL fired them in the first place. The employees that are still there are most certainly not late and lazy -- if they are, the next round of layoffs will surely correct that.

Alec Klein: Indeed, most of the AOL employees are good people--by far. But during the height of the boom, some let the good times go too far.

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Potomac, Md.: Great article -- I'm looking forward to reading the book. For those of us in the online marketing business, these tactics by AOL were known as standard operating procedure dating back to 1997. I think the real breaking point came when big-name companies (e.g. Coca-Cola) felt like they had been hoodwinked, not floundering dot.coms, by AOL. What did you find in your research on this issue?

Alec Klein: Thanks. It's true, AOL's aggressive business practices became industry lore through the late '90s. As the dot-coms began to fall by the wayside, AOL scrambled to get bigger corporate names to fill the revenue void. As we see today, that has failed. AOL's ad revenue has been in a steep decline, and it is looking to find a new business model. Many felt hoodwinked, including the Time Warner folks who had no idea that AOL's ad revenue was projected to slow in the months following the consummation of their merger.

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McLean, Va.: Alec: Do you think that the alliance of Microsoft-AOL will become a reallity soon?

If so, is this company will be the one that will dictate the route of the cybernetic business in the future?

Alec Klein: Good question. It always amazes me how all is fair in love and business. AOL and Microsoft have been blood enemies for years. That they are now talking of cooperation is an interesting wrinkle in their shared history. Whether it will last is another question. Both, after all, are still seeking supremacy on the Internet.

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Herndon, Va.: The whole AOL episode seems to prove that you can push an idea only so far. Colburn’s push to make it the world’s premier advertising medium may have boosted AOL’s revenue, but I think it went way beyond what users and advertisers could stomach.

AOL seems to have lost touch with what users want. Many of us have left and gone to a broadband service. Will AOL find a new business model that works?

Alec Klein: AOL has admitted as much, that it has lost touch with its customers. It does, however, remind me of other times when AOL has lost touch with customers and said so. This seems to happen every so often. Now, however, things are more serious. The company is having trouble bridging to a broadband world. Customers are more savvy about the Internet, AOL has been tarnished, and it charges more than many of its competitors. So only time will tell whether it will be the buggy whip of this era.

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Chicago, Ill.: Hey, this is capitalism, people! Why would one expect AOL or any other company that was about to buy another big fish to act any differently?

The strategy worked, it is still AOL Time Warner not Time Warner AOL. Right?

Alec Klein: Interesting perspective--and yes, it is still AOL Time Warner, not Time Warner AOL. For now. That is the company--in name. But in fact, the company really could be called Time Warner AOL, or Time Warner. The company has removed most of the top AOL people and the Time Warner folks are now running the show.

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Arlington, Va.: Do you think it's a matter of time before the AOL is removed from Time-Warner?

Alec Klein: There has been talk about such a move for months, especially from the Time Warner side of the house. Dick Parsons, the CEO, has been resistant to such a change. But after all that we've seen in recent months, nothing would surprise me.

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Washington, D.C.: Do you really think Colburn was such an unusually skilled and tough negotiator? How hard is it to be that way when your side has all the leverage? It seems to me that under the circumstances, including the options culture at AOL, someone was sure to fill that role of arrogance.

Alec Klein: I do think Colburn was a skilled negotiator. Even those who feared or disliked him said as much. When he and Myer Berlow arrived, AOL had virtually no ad revenue. Within a handful of years, the company had nearly $3 billion in ad revenue. It's possible, though, that if Colburn hadn't been around, someone else might have filled the role of enforcer.

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Bethesda, Md.: If you were working in the tech field and were offered a job at AOL, would you take it? What are the long term survival chances of AOL?

Alec Klein: I don't think that scenario will ever happen. Besides, I'm a writer. As for the long-term survival of AOL, it will depend on whether the company is able to replace all of that lost ad revenue with something else. Also, the company has to figure out how to make real inroads in the broadband world. So far, they are having trouble.

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Georgetown, Washington, D.C.: Nice article! So where are these two guys now? Is there a sense they got some sort of comeuppance? (Please say yes!)

Alec Klein: Thanks. As I mentioned, Colburn was fired and Berlow was effectively squeezed out. For Colburn, I think his AOL legacy will be both a badge of honor and a source of controversy. As for Berlow, he deserves a lot of credit for building the ad business. He, though, will be remembered as a signature AOL employee: bold, brash and dazzling, maybe to a fault.

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Arlington, Va.: I enjoyed the article very much. I interviewed with Berlow about six years ago. No knife, but still an intimidating presence. Can you tell us what the culture at AOL is like now -- is their some chastening that has taken place?

Alec Klein: Berlow, by the way, is also charming and brilliant. Since his departure, AOL has indeed become a different place. With the Time Warner folks in charge, there seems to be less of the bravado in Dulles.

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Alec Klein: Thanks to all for attending this online session. Enjoyed your questions. I'm sorry I didn't get to all of them. I'll be signing books at the Barnes & Noble in Georgetown at 3040 M Street on Thursday, June 26 at 7:30 p.m. and at the Barnes & Noble in Reston at 1851 Fountain Drive on July 10 at 7 p.m.

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