The updated portal plays to its parent's strength, software and services. That can be great -- unless you're looking for something else. Last year, Nortel Networks ran an eye-catching TV ad campaign asking, "What do you want the Internet to be?" When it comes to the consumer Internet, AOL Time Warner and Microsoft are betting that you and I to have different answers to that question. Microsoft thinks we want the Net to be a platform for services, a handy way to organize tasks, and frame and execute decisions. The world's most powerful software company has placed its chips on the idea that we want the Internet to be a lot like software. By contrast, AOL is a media and information company by heritage. Its take is that people want information -- about everything from stocks to entertainment -- with software and utilities taking an important but more secondary role.
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