But there are other pieces…

There's a series of businesses we've invested in. For instance, Revolution Rewards gives incentives for the right kind of behavior, and we have a telephone service we call Nightingale. It's sort of an OnStar for health—somebody who's on your side to navigate through a scary, bewildering system.

How can a website alter something as huge as the health-care system?

Go to Google and type in "diabetes," and you get 130 million hits back. What are you supposed to do with that? Someday, just as people have buddy lists or their stock portfolios on their screens, we want them to have a health dashboard—monitoring how they and their family members are doing across a variety of metrics and recommending actions that can move the wheel in terms of better health at lower cost.

I just had a flashback. I remember, in the 1990s, you were talking about AOL in terms of a dashboard.

I'm not saying I have any new ideas! [Laughter]

But it does sound as if you're using some of the same tactics.

I'm sure there are interviews I did 20 years ago in which I talked about how we make an interactive service easier to use and fun and affordable, and how we really bring the consumer dynamic into play. They're the same principles you can apply to other industries that seem ripe for change.

Anything else about this remind you of the old AOL days?

It's a 10- or 20-year journey. AOL didn't happen overnight either. For years, we were trying to explain to people why we thought, someday, consumers would want PCs, why we thought modems should be built into PCs, and why we thought ideas like email or instant messaging or e-commerce would resonate. Most people thought we were crazy.

What's different about building a company this time around?

It's easier now because I have capital that I can invest, and I have a reputation, so people want to do business with us. But the core principles that were driving me at AOL 20 years ago are very similar to the principles driving me today.

Is Facebook the new AOL?

No. I think if there is a current AOL, it's probably Google. At its peak, AOL really was defining a lot of the industry trends and was king of the hill.

Do you think AOL can come back?

Yeah, I think it can. It's been difficult to watch, given that seven years ago, it was the most important internet company on the planet, and now it's not nearly as relevant. Just over two years ago, I wrote in the Washington Post that Time Warner should split into four companies and let AOL go back to its roots and focus on things like community and social networking. I don't think there’s been anything that changes my view on that.

Would you ever want to take AOL back if Time Warner made it available?

Probably not. That was then; this is now.