WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The blockbuster merger pact of America Online and
Time Warner aims to make the world a better place by fighting social ills,
the heads of both companies said Tuesday.
``This is not just about big business. This is not just about money,'' said
Gerald Levin, the Time Warner chairman who will be chief executive of the
new linkup.
``This is about making a better world for people because we now have the
technology and the instruments to do that,'' he said in a round of
early-morning television appearances with Steve Case, the on-line company's
chairman.
AOL, the world's biggest online company, said Monday it would buy Time
Warner, the biggest media company, in a $160 billion stock deal that would
be the largest merger ever.
One of the goals, Levin said, is to plug the so-called digital divide, ``to
try and make sure that ultimately those who can't afford it can get it.''
Neither Levin nor Case gave any other specifics of plans ''to change the
world.''
``So we're going to have to change our rhetoric,'' he said on the ABC
program ``Good Morning America.'' ``We're going to have to change the way we
think -- because the Internet is that profound.'' He called the Internet
``wildly democratic,'' partly because it can make anyone a publisher.
Case, 41, who is to be chairman of the merged companies, said both outfits
were run by entrepreneurs ``who want to run a business and want to change
the world.''
``Together we have an unbelievable opportunity to really make a difference,
not just in terms of the services people use but also in terms of the kind
of impact we can have on society,'' he said on the NBC ``Today'' program.
Case said he expected the proposed merger, which is subject to regulatory
and shareholder approval, to have a quick impact by making richer content
more readily available among other things.
``We're not talking about 10 or 15 years,'' he said. ``We work on Internet
time. This is a company that's going to move fast. We want to see things
every six months.''
AOL and Time Warner vowed to open what would be their vast cable system to
online rivals. In so doing, they moved to take a debate over access to
high-speed Internet pipelines out of regulators' hands and into the
marketplace.
Levin, 61, said ``new age'' companies had a genuine commitment to social
progress.
``There are companies with people inside who really care'' about using the
Internet for social progress, he said on NBC. ''And that's what we're going
to try to do.''
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