AOL Plans to Offer Free Webmail

UltimaGuy writes "AOL plans to offer a free webmail service to compete directly with Yahoo, Hotmail and Gmail. Does this mean AOL is trying to become something which it is not?"

Comments

Re:AOL trying to be good? Haha,

[nine-times]

They have legions of customers who sincerely believe that they can't have e-mail or web access without going through AOL.

Seriously.

Features

[Gryftir]

The beta doesn't even go public to non-aol subscribers until later in 2005. Currently it is limited to the 100MB given to AOL users, and they haven't given any indication that will change.

Considering Hotmail and Yahoo mail have upgraded to 250MB, about the only thing going for it is the AIM integration.

AOL has webmail for members

[acomj]

This isn't such a strech. They already have AOL available from the web (with a decent client). And Pop3/Imap for aol mail.

This will be like IM which is free for non AOL members, this will make paying for there service much less Desirable. I guess the AOL Everywhere initiative isn't panning out.

We used to use aol at work for a second "on site email" address. It had these things going for it: local numbers everywhere, a 1-800 number to dial in when all else fails. It was the travelers friend. Now with web mail and most hotels having some limited wifi, its much less usefull.

Good for consumers though

AOL already has free webmail

[ModernCelt]

AOL owns and operates netscape.net, which offers webmail and other services. Every AIM account has a corresponding netscape.net email account. If you register the Netscape browser, you create an AIM screenname and therefore a netscape.net email account.