BUSINESSWEEK ONLINE : JANUARY 10, 2000 ISSUE
COVER STORY On the Case at AOL KEY ACCOMPLISHMENTS Shares roughly doubled to 78 in 1999 Deals to broaden AOL's availability and services will help boost income 102% this fiscal year, to $800 million Under Chairman and CEO STEPHEN M. CASE, America Online Inc. (AOL) has become the 800-pound gorilla of e-commerce. AOL has 22 million subscribers, up 30% from a year ago, and online merchants and advertisers are tripping over one another to reach them. No wonder AOL scores record-breaking profits quarter after quarter and the stock keeps churning ahead. But that's not enough for Case, 41. A quiet strategic thinker, he spent the past year inking deals that extend AOL beyond the desktop, to TV screens, mobile phones, and handheld computers. Case invested $1.5 billion in Hughes Electronics Corp. to send AOL over satellite TV. Partnerships will put AOL on 3Com's Palm computing devices and Motorola's new smart phones. To beef up AOL's downloadable Web music, Case, a former singer for college rock bands, bought two digital music startups. He also just agreed to pay $1.1 billion for MapQuest.com, which provides maps online. And a venture with Eastman Kodak Co. lets AOL users more easily send photos via e-mail. With so many deals in the air, it would be easy for Case to lose focus. And indeed, he still has to show that AOL can grow as fast overseas as it has in the U.S. Investors are convinced that Case is on track to make AOL a household necessity--even if it's not necessarily on a PC. _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ BACK TO TOP					RELATED ITEMS INTRODUCTION MANAGERS TO WATCH THE TOP ENTREPRENEURS THE TOP 25 MANAGERS Minuro Arakawa Bernard Arnault Arthur Blank Peter Bijur Gordon Binder Steve Case John Chambers James Curvey Thierry Desmarest Bernie Ebbers Tom Engibous Chris Gent Irwin Jacobs Steve Jobs Mel Karmazin James Kelly Timothy Koogle Ken Lay Jenny Ming Thomas Siebel Masayoshi Son Martha Stewart Keiji Tachikawa Jack Welch Yun Jong Yong ONLINE EXTRAS TO BUSINESS WEEK INVESTOR INTERACT E-Mail to Business Week Online

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