I used to get a lot of pleasure in bashing AOL when they would send me literally thousands of CD’s that all ended up in the land-fill. I even told my buddies who had stock in AOL, that they better unload it while the getting was good. Every last one of them wishes today that they had taken my advice as they lost 100’s of thousands of dollars on the stock when the AOL stock collapsed.
So the whole debacle about Mike Arrington, the CrunchFund, Arianna Huffington then Mike’s final ultimatum left AOL with a decision to make. This evening the folks at Fortune say Mike is officially out. You can see the vultures circling from a variety of second rate start-up sites, because these sites have been getting their butts kicked for so long by Mike’s crew, they now see blood in the street and are gonna try and swoop in for the kill.
The next question is how many of the excellent writers at TechCrunch are now gonna bail? We will see how many of them pick a paycheck over loyalty to Mike. My bet is we “will not” see a mass exodus from TechCrunch, but what we will see is that website turn into another piece of crap site that AOL now has editorial controls. Mark my words this decision by AOL is gonna end up being the beginning of the end of AOL as people know it today.
Ohh an lets not forget, that their is the TechCrunch Disrupt event next week, and if Mike is missing from that event, it will likely be it’s last. I am sure the TechCrunch crew are just gonna love working for Arianna Huffington when she peers down at them with her beady eyes and says obey slaves.