The (Net) King is Dead! Long live the King!

January 24, 2001 10:22 AM

The (Net) King is Dead! Long live the King! Alas, Time Warner finds a way to repurpose it's dead Pathfinder into another of its new but also ailing properties. Didn't they learn the first time? Or is it more of a "Well, we have this highly visible domain...." Hmmmmm.
posted by bkdelong (4 comments total)

I yearn for the simpler days of "What's New" and "What's Cool!" on my Netscape bar, and the huge Mozilla graphics. Those were the days....
posted by hijinx at 10:36 AM on January 24, 2001

Now the question is what will survive.

Anyone who is a Harry Potter or Pokemon fan will have been following the pain in the ass merger through the Warner Bros. Studio Store online. A week before Christmas they said they were not allowing any more orders to ensure everything would arrive by Christmas.

In a rumor mill report from News.com, they confirmed the site closed because of great sales and would open the day after X-Mas.

As of January 8th, the same message was still up. A few days later, it was replaced with a "We're redesigning the site. Stay tuned!"

Finally, they decided to be honest with the public and a week ago printed that anyone wanting to buy Warner Bros. products needs to go to a local store....and linked to the store locator.

<RANT type="pissy">

How many MeFiers like to see what a store is selling before they physically trek out to get it? Personally, if I'm in the mall (er rarely) I'll stop buy the store. But if my wife has asked me about the Harry Potter Mirror of Erised that can only be found at the WB Store, I'm going to check it out online, look at the price and see if I can get it cheaper.

How the hell are we supposed to see what new WB merchandize is being sold? Have them send me a catalog? Christ. That defeats the purpose of doing research online. Or even looking for new products for those of us who are involved with WB-specific fan sites.

What the public doesn't know (and I only know about this while trying to find out the latest news on Harry Potter merchandizing) is that WB licensees (like Mattel, Hasbro, Gund etc) who make products cannot sell them online unless they have a brick-and-mortar stores nor can they sell to online-only resellers and retailers.

I guess my question is now that WB appears to be severely downsizing their brick-and-mortar stores and have ceased to run an online operation for their Studio Store merchandize, are they going to change their license agreements?
</RANT>
posted by bkdelong at 10:49 AM on January 24, 2001

That goes a long way towards explaining why it's so hard to find Cardcaptors merchandise online. I'm trying to find the American Clow Cards, and no online store seems to have them. Now I know why...

WB used to run two Studio Stores in the Twin Cities; the only one open now is in the Mall of America and doesn't have as much of a selection as the Rosedale store did. I'm an unfortunate Potter fanatic, but I had gone to the WB store for Road Runner and Kids WB/Cartoon Network stuff, and they didn't have much of that. Lots of Bugs & Tweety. I don't like them.

I just hope that AOL Time Warner isn't in the mood to start cutting staff at Time Warner Cable. I work for a competitor and have to hear complaints about shoddy TW service even though we have nothing to do with it.
posted by Electric Elf at 12:25 PM on January 24, 2001

On a note (somewhat) related to the origin of this thread, the CNet version of this news includes the following:

Breaking from Netscape's technology roots, AOL Time Warner this week moved the browser development group out from under the Netscape division and into the AOL Technology wing.

One assumes this effectively means the end of the Netscape browser brand - it's easy to see how if they do continue to develop the browser technology at all, it would be as a component internal to the AOL client...
posted by m.polo at 2:30 PM on January 24, 2001