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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?"
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Does this mean AOL is trying to become something which it is not?
Conversely I think AOL is trying to enforce what it is: a portal to their own services and the internet. Once a user is using AOL's mail package then AOL can put whatever it wants on their mail webpage much like MS does with Hotmail. "Want to chat with Britney and Justin? Join AOL for $FOO and be here Saturday night!"
AOL is a business, businesses don't do "free" without some catch. Their free mail offering is nothing more than a hook to get the AOL brandname back into peoples' minds.
Trolling is a art,
Seriously.
It's not what it was. When they are hemorrhaging so many users a month, they are no longer succeeding at being an ISP. Looks like they are branching out to see if something else works. Like Apple trying out the iPod "experiment".:Their Newton experiment didn't work too well, but this one by golly seems to be paying off.
However, I don't see this helping AOL that much. I don't think that the webmail field is all that lucrative, and it is very crowded with competitors (even including Hotmail) getting better.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
it's the year 2008... and AOL's bankrupt!
Time Warner would have to spin off AOL first for that to happen.
Seriously though, how does AOL expect to compete?
As a loss leader perhaps, in the same way as Microsoft Xbox?
Wow, wouldn't you love to have a free webmail address with the AOL brandname attached to it, so you can email your friends with? Nothing says class, prestige and superior social status like a free webmail AOL address! Where do I sign up?
"Backups are for wimps. Real men upload their data to an FTP site and have everyone else mirror it." -- Linus Torvalds
Does this mean AOL is trying to become something which it is not?
I think it would be good for most people to become something which they are not.
http://www.haxwell.org
Uh, so I can get a webmail account on a domain where there are already 20million+ usernames taken?
Great! I get to be Mike86554319234@aol.com.
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.
http://www.santacruzbynight.com/index.shtml Santa Cruz By Night Vampire Larp
I remember when Apple started charging for its .Mac stuff. Steve Jobs said that the free internet was over. Well, it seems to have rebounded. Gmail now offers 1GB of storage and everyone else seems to be going that way too. The problem is that AOL is becoming less useful. They were offering their subscribers a tiny email box and dial-up access for $24 per month. At the same time, they could get nearly identical service - often better - from others for less than half that price. Heck, you can get it from AOL for less than half the price under their Netscape brand. This has led AOL to loose, I think, 4 million subscribers recently.
AOL never came up with a good broadband strategy and they never came up with content or tools that the internet didn't match or better. Put that together and AOL just doesn't look like a good value. With this strategy, AOL is trying to correct that mistake and leverage the AOL brand to offer things on the same playing field as its competitors.
I hope you're not trying to put a negative spin on that. Frankly, I think it's great that AOL's involved. Look what happened when Google entered the market: competition drove the quality of all the other products way up. Capitilism at its best.
I really don't think AOL will catch on to be nearly as big as the other three mentioned, but I don't begrudge them doing what's in their best economic interest.
Thank God for evolution.
If any of you got banned from aim, you will remember that AOL's DB admins are all idiots. I wouldn't want to trust my email to that.
Le français vous intéresse?
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
So what innovative features will AOL WebMail Support?
1) Advanced URL that allows you to access your email from any computer in the world! No extra software required (*).
2) Up to and over 100 Megabytes of Lightening Fast Mail Storage! (again, no real details in article)
3) Your own personal email address, which is yours and yours alone. Allowing your friends and family to easily remember it and send you email!
4) Super-duper spam blocker. Prevents 90% of the email originating from AOL from leaving AOL! (this WAS discussed in the article)
5) Weekly AOL spam with software attachments. The ZIP file will be a nicely decorated tin.
Ok who wants AOL Mail Invites?...I have 6 to give out...
"Does this mean AOL is trying to become something which it is not?"
1. AOL is a Internet technology compnay. Email is part of it. AOL is a customer service company. Email serves customers.
2. Who cares if AOL does something different. Does it really matter? Or is this where we all bash one company (MS, AOL, Walmart, **AA) for doing something, yet praise another company (Apple, RedHat) for doing the exact same thing.
3. You don't need to have the stupid lead-in questions that can be answered with a Yes or No. People will still not read the article and post comments. Even in duplicate stories.
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
Well lets see, they have a huge subscriber base already. The rest of the world is currently unaware google will be offering a free email service, and get this, all the non techies I have sent invites to have rejected them on privacy grounds. And lets face it, everyone has a hotmail account and knows its best use is for spam attracting, anonymous junk sign ups. Plenty of room for a quality service if AOL can provide it.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
This makes no sense. How will AOL benefit if it can't install enough spyware and adware on your computer to bring it to a crawl? I had to install the demon on my work computer, since AOL users were not able to keep sessions on our server due to its proxy farms. It tries to run 4 background apps, one of which eats 11M of memory which claims to be a spyware blocker. Right. Due to the proxy farms browsing with AOL over DSL is like going back to 1994 over 14.4 dialup. It took 30 seconds to get pages which should have taken 5. Then again, I wish them a hearty does of failure!
This reminds of of when that crazy search engine Google said they were gonna do webmail. Nice try Google! We all know you're just a search engine!
I have to go now... there are some men here to escort me to the re-education chamber for speaking out about our hard working, highly skilled IT workers.
Someday a real rain is gonna come...
AOL owns Netscape, which already has free webmail - granted, it isn't the greatest and doesn't have the AOL branding, but it's still in existence.
Why not a device that combines the best features of the Newton and the iPod?
You put in your Pink Floyd AAC files, and listen in the little white headphones: "We bone need oh education. Flea don't bead no cough control"....
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
I've yet to see a web application as good as a comparable client application.
This is my sig.
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.
I can hear it now -- AOL's innovative feature that separates it from the rest is..... "You've got Webmail!". Groan....
Slashmail.org "The Open Source Email Com
Most companies look at things from the perspective of "Will it make us money?" I'm sure AOL is not different. I'd say that someone came up with an idea, researched it and presented it to the managment team and was able to convince them that somehow, someway there was enough potential there for them to make money so they decided to do it.
Frankly, I kind of like the idea of an AOL email account. I can give people an address I'll never check!
No more than Google is. Remember when it was a search engine? AOL has been doing email for years.
/syle