If we have to accept that there are companies that are totally badass like, say our recent post about Google, then too, we must accept that there are companies that are equally punkass. AOL, aka America Online, (NYSE: AOL) is a punkass company that comes to mind. A little known fact about AOL is that is was originally Quantum Computer Services, some kind of computer company franchise. Today headquartered in New York, its original headquarters were in Dulles, VA (full disclosure, I worked around and in tech in that neighborhood for quite a few years).

In the 90’s AOL grew into, for all intents and purposes, the premier internet portal with a subscription membership that was well over 30 million worldwide. AOL grew on some clever positioning as the everyday user’s guide to the internet. It made everything on the web easy, even though their performance was horrendous. (A few AOL guys from that time whispered to me that their (unpublicized) differentiater at the time was the ability to open (Usenet?) zipped porn files automatically. I don’t know the truth about that, I am just saying…. In any event, AOL was hot back then. Market value in those heady days rose to $240 billion!

Then AOL just got plain stupid. As the web grew, with free, distributed content, fast search, with search engines beginning to deliver what users could reasonably judge to be the most relevant content for their consumption, there were no matching offers or structural changes at AOL. Performance remained iffy, the acquisition of Netscape was a disaster – and actually a major setback for search. AOL was unable to see beyond subscriber revenue even as the future held the threat of precipitous decline. All this notwithstanding, AOL merged with Time Warner in 2001. Brick and Motar media company marries internet. I am sure Steve Case thought he saw synergies. I am sure I, and most people with half a brain never did. The people with half a brain and I were right as it turned out.

Here is some surely stupid shit that speaks to AOL’s punkassitude: In 2006, they raised their subscription price. I think I know why. They were counting on subscribers who had forgotten, were too busy or too dead to cancel, not noticing the change in the billing amount. But reality, as we all know is a bitch. Before the end of the year, AOL was giving away pretty much all their shit for free. AOL had screwed up not only their valuation at this, but also that of Time Warner. Steve Case and the original band were long gone. AOL had no talent, no standing in tech anymore. (Another side note – I worked with a lot of former AOLers. I sort of understand why the thing failed. With one exception, I don’t remember any world beaters).

For a company that literally led in internet access in the late nineties to early 2000’s, AOL has no claim to any lasting innovation (if there is, someone send me a note – I would love to know). They failed to leverage their subscription and reach for any meaningful business, technology or even societal purpose. Ok, so maybe in Dulles they can claim 2 exits on route 28 and the growth of the Ashburn suburb as directly attributable to AOL but that is it and even that is a stretch. The more lasting impression is one of failure and lack of innovation, the close call of nearly bringing down, by association Time Warner, and the sad pathetic shell of a once proud tech giant. Punkass. Painful punkassitude. Period!!

Today, I start a series of posts (as I find the time), to explore what I like to call corporate badassitude. Wherein, I examine a company/enterprise, and on the basis of a few criteria (or more, or less, or none at all depending on my mood), I will postulate on the badassitude of that corporation or company or enterprise or its leadership or anything else in the corporation that I decide to talk about for the purpose of reaching a badassitude conclusion.

For our inaugural look for the purposes of declaring that a company is badass, I decided to take the very easy path. Today we will talk a little bit about Google. Google was founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin, then PhD students at Stanford. They posited that an algorithm that ranked pages based on the number and types of linking relationships with other pages would offered up better search results. They went against the grain at the time and decided to just do one thing – search. No content UI tricks, no gimmicks, etc. Just search. And they have been kicking ass since. As an aside, the Google search engine was first named “BackRub” – which does not have a badass ring to it. Then it was googol – which I think had a rather badass ring to it – before it was Google (which as a name is probably just neutrally badass).

Once they had the search thing nailed down, Google started to branch out, one direction at a time. At other times it looked like they were branching into many new directions at the same time. Sometimes, it seemed they did it just because it seemed interesting to them. And every time they did it, they seemed to kick ass. They have always been so badass and so confident in their badassitude that their prospectus specifically says to investors something to this effect “We are glad you invested in us but we couldn’t give a rats ass if you didn’t…” and they add “We will do whatever the fuck we want in whatever industry we want and if you don’t like it, you can go jump in the lake….” I am paraphrasing and exaggerating but that is just about what the prospectus said. Badassitude? I think so!

Ten years later, they have done what I thought would take forever for any company to do. They really, truly started to put some fear into Microsoft. For all intents and purposes, Google now has the Mobile OS of the future – even as all reasonable people agree that Mobile Windows must surely be declared dead. Google owns so much shit – from data to super powerful hardware, to data pipes, companies etc. And the rest of us do not know what they intend to do with. It will be interesting, should they ever get seriously challenged, to see the giant wake up and unleash the power they are sitting on.

Google has the inside track for leadership in cloud computing. And they keep doing things to Google Apps that with every small step, make desktop software a little bit more irrelevant. And it looks like they do something literally every day. Totally badass. The perpetual Beta is such a neat concept that even when a launch does not look as clean as it should (Buzz?), the almost casual introduction protects them from the hard hit that would come from screwing up a big launch. And because it always looks like Beta, they can make fixes without the brouhaha other would suffer for a simple fix.

I could go on and on about Google’s badassitude. But Google is badass more than anything else, for reinventing search, remaking search, leading search and indeed owning search. Pure. Badassitude! Period.

Darchinyan – Badass!
I watched  Vic Darchinyan beat Rodrigo Guerrero. The Guerrero kid put up a good fight. Decent speed. He needed more power for sure. Darchinyan though is a badass. There are very few fighters who load up so apparently when they are getting ready to launch a big punch and still get away with it. Everyone knows exactly where that big punch is coming from and yet many still get hit by it. That is badassitude of a very high grade.

Devon Alexander – Badass!
Who looked great last night though was Devon Alexander against Juan Urango. He looked clinical, confident and quick. Was he ever? Durango couldn’t seem to find him as well as he wanted. And when he did, he couldn’t seem to drop enough cleans shot on him. And when he did, it did not seem to do anything. On the other hand, Devon was moving around beautifully, taking clean shots at Durango, finally dropping him twice in the 8^th to stop the fight. Moral of the story, speed will triumph 85% of the time.

Joppy Retires
Speaking of, William Joppy  announced his retirement last night after what was apparently a hard fought loss to Sebastien Demers. Joppy has been fighting for a long time. He is a bonafide badass. But it is time to move on now. I hope he truly retires (at some point we would like to think that the word has meaning. No. In any event, we wish Joppy the best. His badassitude was always clear.

Jonny is still fighting?
I ran across a piece that totally threw me. Johnny Tapia is still fighting. Or he is back fighting or some such. Johnny is like 100 years old and was last seen having his ass kicked like 50 years ago. Ok, I exaggerate. But when Johnny quit the fight game years ago, it was because he was too old. So he found the fountain of youth? He won the fight. Johnny’s record was (57-5-2, 29 KOs). His opponent who also goes by the name Tomato Can was (21-28-3, 17 KOs). Once upon a time, Johnny had so much badassitude it was silly. Those days are long gone!