Here’s something interesting I picked up when I was researching snatched .be domain names: AOL (formerly America Online) is making its way to Belgium.
As you can tell from the screenshot below, which is what you see when you visit AOL.be, the American internet services and media company operated by Time Warner is supposed to make its entry in Belgium by the end of this year. Since they have only 1 month left to live up to its promise, I’m wondering what exactly they will be launching, and why.
As you know, Google and MSN.be are the most visited ’start pages’ in this country, along with several newspaper and ISP portals. We don’t have Yahoo! here (although we do have Kelkoo, a Yahoo! property), and up until now we didn’t have AOL either. But the question is: what are they going to bring to the table that’s new? Since the website clearly mentions it’s going to be a portal site, I’m assuming it’s going to look like AOL.com but then country-specific, and I doubt that’s going to be enough to break the current hegemony of MSN and Google.
Since they haven’t yet replied to any of my e-mails looking for more explanation, my guess is as good as yours: why is AOL preparing a Belgian portal site?
In case you’re interested, here’s a map showing where AOL is active (Belgium is not also on the map but and has a link on top).
November 28th, 2007 at 1:27 pm
*cough* could it be skynet.be new best friend ? *cough*
November 28th, 2007 at 2:53 pm
Hi Robin
Not sure if you understood my website, but thanks for stopping by!
The point and value of not waking up just to an alarm buzzer, but to a buzzer and then audio messages from those closest to you are many! Your birthday, a holiday, friend saying go back to bed it’s a snowday, warning from a friend who stuck in traffic, someone making you laugh, important info about an early morning meeting time change, a friend saying i dig this song and then you hear it, the possibilities are endlessly useful and life enriching!!!
We have been setting our alarm clocks for centuries only to be awakened by meaningless impersonal noise! It’s 21st century and via the Internet and Sleep.FM it’s time to change that for the better!
Cheers,
Ryan
November 29th, 2007 at 10:26 am
[…] blognation Belgium » Blog Archive » AOL Coming To Belgium (But When … And Why?) AOL a des projets de portail en Belgique. (tags: aol web belgique belgium portal) […]
December 10th, 2007 at 7:49 pm
[…] AOL seemingly making its way to Belgium, it appears that Expedia is also preparing the launch of a localized […]
December 18th, 2007 at 6:32 pm
Hi Robin, Have a look at www.aol.be now. This might answer your question
AOL.be launched today. The site launched as an Ultra Light Portal, which means that it has quite basic features at the moment. The plan is apparently to see what the portal does in market. If it works it will evolve.