Motavalli, John. Bamboozled at the Revolution: How Big Media Lost Billions in the Battle for the Internet. New York: Viking, 2002. 334 pages.

This is a history of Time-Warner, America Online, Disney, Newscorp, and the TV networks, as each attempted to stake out its presence on the Internet before the bubble burst. The author worked for a number of media trade publications, was the first Internet columnist at the New York Post from 1996 to 1997, and later worked at CMGI, a dot-com that saw its stock plunge from $150 to $3. He is very much an "insider," and outsiders may feel that the book contains too much detail about too many high-flyers at aging media companies. Nevertheless, it's amusing to read about ambitious execs as they try to figure out the meaning of the Internet. Is it content, eyeballs, banner ads, or portals? Without a business plan, is it possible to make do with high-tech buzzwords? "Bamboozled" is an appropriate word for the title. Another phrase, found on the flyleaf, is "black dotcomedy."

Most of the detail has to do with Time Warner, which was taken over by AOL in January 2000. Today, nearly five years later, Time Warner is still trying to recover, and AOL is still reorganizing. Now all the talk is about Google, which just completed its IPO and is the proud sponsor of Internet Bubble 2.0. As a measure of how fast things change, Google didn't get a single mention in this book -- because in 2002, just two years ago, it wasn't on anyone's radar.
ISBN 0-670-89980-1

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