America Online 2009 Annual Report Download - page 24

Table of Contents
and often contradictory technology platforms and infrastructure. Updating and replacing our technology infrastructure may be challenging to implement and
manage, may take time to test and deploy, may cause us to incur substantial costs and may cause us to suffer data loss or delays or interruptions in service.
These delays or interruptions in service may cause our consumers, advertisers and publishers to become dissatisfied with our offerings and could adversely
affect our business.
Our dependence on legacy technology infrastructure may also put us in a weaker position relative to a number of our key web services competitors.
Competitors with newer technology infrastructure may have greater flexibility and be in a position to respond more quickly than us to new opportunities,
which may impact our competitive position in certain markets and adversely affect our business.
In addition, many of our employees with the necessary skills to maintain and repair our legacy technology infrastructure have either been reassigned
within AOL or are no longer with AOL, creating a potential gap in our ability to service and support this legacy infrastructure. This potential gap may be
exacerbated by our recent restructuring activities.
If we are unable to hire, engage and retain key personnel, our business could be adversely affected.
We are dependent on our ability to hire, engage and retain talented, highly-skilled employees, including employees with specific areas of expertise.
Accomplishing this may be difficult due to many factors, including the impact of our restructuring plans on employee morale, the geographic location of our
main corporate and business offices, fluctuations in global economic and industry conditions, frequent changes in our management and leadership and the
attractiveness of our compensation programs relative to those of our competitors. If we do not succeed in retaining and engaging our key employees and in
attracting new key personnel, including personnel with specific areas of expertise, we may be unable to meet our strategic objectives and, as a result, our
business could be adversely affected.
Further, due to past changes in our strategic direction and recent restructuring activities, we may not have employees whose skills fully align with those
required to achieve our strategic objectives. In some cases, we may need to hire suitably skilled employees to address strategic challenges we may encounter
in the future.
A failure to scale and adapt our existing technology architecture to manage the expansion of our offerings could adversely affect our business.
We expect to continue to expand our offerings to consumers, advertisers and publishers. Expanding the amount and type of our offerings will require
substantial expenditures to scale or adapt our technology infrastructure. The technology architectures utilized for our consumer offerings and advertising
services are highly complex and may not provide satisfactory support as usage increases and products and services expand, change and become more complex
in the future. We may make additional changes to our architectures and systems to deliver our consumer offerings and services to advertisers and publishers,
including moving to completely new technology architectures and systems. Such changes may be challenging to implement and manage, may take time to test
and deploy, may cause us to incur substantial costs and may cause us to suffer data loss or delays or interruptions in service. These delays or interruptions in
service may cause consumers, advertisers and publishers to become dissatisfied with our offerings and could adversely affect our business.
If we cannot effectively distribute our content, products and services, our ability to attract new consumers could be adversely affected.
As the Internet audience continues to fragment, distribution of our content, products and services via traditional methods (e.g., toolbars) may become
less effective, and new distribution strategies may need to be developed. Even if we are able to distribute our content, products and services effectively, this
does not assure that we will be able to attract new consumers.
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