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AOL Launches Free Webmail Service
kmilani2134 writes "America Online is moving into the Web-based e-mail market on Wednesday by tying e-mail into its popular AOL Instant Messenger service. Called AIM Mail, the service marks AOL's latest attempt to reposition itself as a broad portal rather than a subscriber-based service. It also will compete more directly against Yahoo Inc, Microsoft Corp.'s MSN division and Google Inc., all of which have battled over Webmail storage and features over the past year. This was covered by both eWeek and InternetNews.com. Of note, they seem to have incorporated the Mailblocks spam filtering and tracker addresses into their service. It will be interesting to see how long before these new 2 GB accounts are inundated with spam."
It will be interesting to see how long before these new 2 GB accounts are inundated with spam.
It's good to see you're approaching this with an open mind. Criminy.
Comment of the year
I don't know about you, but anyone that gives me an AOL address is immediatly put below me in my mind.
It has been a long time since I used AOL. I seem to recall they had problems such as employees stealing entire databases of info and selling it to spammers. How are their spam filters now, and how likely are you to receive spam just for being a member?
It's also a bit amusing that all these large portal companies like AOL are trying to compete with services like Gmail that don't even provide anything other than email. Google is still not an ISP as far as I know...
If you can get that @aol.com email for free, why the need to pay $10-$20 per month? I wonder if many subscribers will leave (not sure if it lets them cancel an account, then make an aim with the same name) or, at the very least, will they not gain many new ones?
can a subscriber cancel their account and keep the email address as a free one? Likely not as the email address is what is keeping 75% of all subscribers. Why else would you pay for dialup when you can spend $10 more and get broadband???
Couldn't you already get e-mail at your AOL screen name @netscape.net?
The idea of a capitalist world is that there are to be numerous products in the same category that compete and try to be the best. That way, the consumer is provided with a choice of what they wish to have, and often they end up with a better product as a result of the competition.
The problem is, all these new web mail services are offering basically the same thing for the same price (that is, no money, but people pay through the price of ads and such.)
As one can see, I use a gmail account, because it offers the keyboard shortcuts. In all honesty, that's all that's kept me there because it's the only unique feature. I don't mean to be bashing the new services; it just seems as though there's nothing new in each one that pops up, except for the name.
What's more, an "unsend" feature lets users cancel a message after it's been sent to another AOL or AIM Mail user -- if the message is unread.
:)
Not bad, though hardly innovative - you can already do something close to that with Exchange and other mail systems. What I'd really like is the ability, within a certain time interval, to yank an IM off someone's window if I suddenly changed my mind about wanting them to see it. Anyone that's accidentally sent an IM to the wrong person knows what I'm talking about.
The coolest voice ever.
So now it's America Online Instant Messenger Mail? What's next? AM $FOO?
AIM really hasnt improved for a few versions now. All they keep doing is adding more junk like weatherbug, a popupblocker, aim today crap, spyware scanner. It's a freaking IM program, leave it at that.
I don't like using gaim in windows because it still doesn't work all the time with file transfers and image transfers. Once gaim improves a little more I may just switch over to gaim in windows.
Google bumped GMail up to 2GB when other companies started offering 1GB. What do you want to bet that Google will now bump it up to 3GB?
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I hear GMail uses something where if two users have the same message, it'll only save one copy of it on the servers. If AOL is using this kind of system, it won't hurt them at all to sell the email addresses of people...because their servers will only keep one copy of the message! :)
I thought so too until I realized it's not all that difficult to move your email address. Then I met a guy who pays for a cable connection and pays AOL on top of that for their UI and extras. I've begged him to stop but he feels comfortable in that little AOL frame. I've even showed him how easy it is to just open a damn browser and go wherever you want but he won't budge.
Are there even any reasonable email names left @aol.com? Will all the new free accounts use random strings for the UID?
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
Or is this another case of great editing?
R.
MOD UP PARENT AS "FUNNY"!! :)
But free web-based email services were cool about, oh, about seven years ago.
Yeah, AOL is fucked. What I don't get is the mindset of people who pay the $25 a month for so little, when superior dialup service can be had for half the price.
AOL needs to first convince me that they won't fill my mailbox with ads like they do my AIM client. And I don't want to pay for the once-free DeadAIM.
Here in the UK, AOL is always referred to as "AOL" and not "America Online." I've oft wondered, after seeing the various adverts, what -does- it stand for?
;-)
Surely not "America", as that would be a rather big insult to the British, wouldn't you say?
With the ridiculous way Aol is blocking mail from third parties, one would need to be a moron to want to sign up for an Aol email address.
Besides, do you really want to be associated with Ao-NOOB-l?
eTrade SUCKS
I suppose the ability to get a really cool email name creates demand for a new system. Is there really any other reason?
A most overlooked advantage to owning a computer is if they foul up there's no law against wacking them around a bit.
What is interesting is that you already have an account if you have an AIM Screen Name. I went to the website, logged in with my AIM credentials, and it brought me right into the inbox. No accepting any terms & conditions, etc. It never even told me what my email address is (though I assume it is screenname@aol.com).
I've got a Mailblocks account. Is there any point paying for renewal if I can get the same tech for free through AOL? Aside from the embarassment of becoming a direct AOL user of course (yes I know I've been an AOL user since they bought Mailblocks in August).
and it has gotten the step motherly treatment since then. Before Goldman expired, Mailblocks was updated regularly every 4-5 months.
AIM mail is based on mailblocks. Around the beginning of 2004, Mailblocks was gaining a lot of customers. Once AOL acquired it, mailblocks went into a time wrap. Even now the mail quota is a paltry 15MB. I sent 2-3 mails to mailblocks support asking whether they plan to allow mail quotas higher than 100MB. They gave no definite answer.
So I abandoned mailblocks, moved all my mail to a hosting server, soon after that I tried gmail but webmail and pop3 just doesn't cut it once you're used to IMAP. So the only alternative was fastmail and I'm happy with it now.
Many mailblocks customers have abandoned their accounts but if mailblocks does get 2GB quotas, I'm sure many former users might give it a try again. AIM mail may provide a lot of space but it is not compelling compared to gmail. Eweek says that IMAP support will be provided but will it be free? If it is, then it might be interesting.
The companies that sell things (for money) pay these service providers to have their message presented to potential customers of theirs. Note that it's not necessarily the fact that more potential customers means better; it's getting the ads out to the right potential customers that matters. Advertisers pay for the ads, then eventually some of the users pay the advertisers for their products/services. These are the markets in which capitalism lives.
In contrast, users of the free service are not customers at all; they're simply another commodity asset of the provider. The provider uses the demographics of its asset to help it sell advertising. This is a capitalist market for advertising, where service providers compete for advertising dollars by demonstrating that theirs is the best mix of users for their advertisers. Note also that these providers are advertisers themselves, including when they induce users to upgrade to "premium" services for a fee.
Indeed, because users are a valuable commodity in this respect, the service providers do compete to assemble what they perceive to be the optimum audience. However, I submit that there is no capitalism where there is no money changing hands. Users are a commodity asset "owned" by the free service provider. I would further suggest this helps explain the lack of "customer service" that many of these providers offer to users.
[quote]...all of which have battled over Webmail storage and features over the past year.[/quote]
battled? whatev. Google pwned. people were ready to sell their children for gmail accounts there for a while. ms and yahoo are still crying in the corner.
Goldman? Dogs of the AMS... time they made a move.
lost they are. Attempting to regain market share they are. Hmmm, desperate they are.
Then install the MSN Ad Remover and knock yourself out.
Funny how I've had to do this twice already in this thread. Anyone else got an IM that they want mo to find an Ad-Remover for?
I'm a signature virus. Please copy me to your signature so I can replicate.
Curious... why doesn't Gmail/pop3 cut it? If you just leave messages on server, then you basically have a backup of all the mail you've gotten, handilly Google searchable.
Although I suppose this could start being a pain if you check mail from multiple computers.
I'll never make that mistake again, reading the experts' opinions. - Feynman
Because AOL has popup, virus and spam blocking! Sure, you can get it all for free, but it's AOL and AOL is a big company so they must be better. Besides, they protect our children with their haphazard automatic filtering! If you don't get a webservice that includes a machine to protect your kids so you don't have to, what kind of irresponsible parent are you?
Well for a little more then $10 you can upgrade to AOL Broadband, not all AOL services are dialup, and there was a rumor a while ago saying that they were canceling their broadband service across the nation but it was just a rumor and not true. AOL also offers many more things then just a typical ISP. AOL gives you free access to all kinds of music, video, and other media sources. Things that most people would have to pay monthly per source for, AOL subscribers get as part of their subscription. On top of that, they have kick ass spam filters, AOL scans for spyware, has a virus blocker and even though they use IE as a backend to their browser, they've included additional features such as a privacy protector and a pop-up blocker (long before SP2). All of this is contained in one window on your screen where you can easily talk to anyone else online, while accessing these many other features. I personally don't use AOL but I've recommended it to many people. Its actually a really nice service now a days, it just has a bad rep. This most likely stems from the fact that just about everyone compares them directly to other ISPs and other ISP prices. You get a hell of alot more bang for your buck then you do with something like NetZero. Let me put it this way... I've had to cleanup a lot more computers that have had Comcast or Verizon broadband then I've had to that have had AOL Broadband or Dialup services.
Regards,
Steve
Neat!!!11111!!!111!!!!oneoneoneone!!!!111!
Or cable/DSL can often be found for $5-$10 more a month.
I'll never make that mistake again, reading the experts' opinions. - Feynman
Screen Name Not Available
Sorry, rapist18 is already in use.
It appears that the madness will soon begin
Anyone with an AIM accounts could already log into AIM_Name@Netscape.com for web based email. how is this any different?
Shhh... I realized something that few people seem to have got so far.
IT'S JUST EMAIL!
I store my email on my laptop thank you very much, and I have storage limited only by my free HDD space (of which, I might add, it hasn't approached yet, because I'm sane and use email like normal people do, to send messages and small attachments).
Not that I'm saying that lots of storage is a bad thing or anything, I'm all for it. But I imagine that this is more marketing hype than anything -- I'd estimate 97% of people won't even approach the space limits set for them, and these companies know this.
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
I'm trying to move a relative off AOL now that she is on cable, and have her email on Google. The problem is, a lot of her email still comes to her AOL account, which does not support mail forwarding. Will this allow her to access her AOL mail online (maybe even forward it), even if she cancels AOL service?
AOL Mail is the only lockin, or else she would have been off a few months ago. She's just to lazy to switch people and newsletters over, even though she's losing $20/month.
Anyone know the IMAP settings?
I've heard many horror stories about AOL's spam "protection." They've blocked many legit email address just because people accidently clicked the "spam" button. So AOL email, on the paid accounts, is useless. How is the free account going to be any better? Especially since anyone can grab a GMail account just as easily.
I'm a former Mailblocks user. I moved to Mailblocks after using Yahoo Mail (this was last year) and was extremely impressed with Mailblocks. One of the trademark features that Mailblocks sports is the Trackers feature, which allows you to use "disposable" email addresses. You get 5 of them with a free account. After I found GMail, I pretty much left Mailblocks, only checking my Mailblocks inbox once every other week. Why did I switch? GMail, IMHO, sported a better UI, and had a lot of storage. Even if Mailblocks/AIM Mail decided to get a 2GB quota (still less than GMail), I still probably won't switch unless there are some more improvements; like free POP3/IMAP and SMTP with the free account. Also, it'd be nice if AIM Mail had a web-based service; I haven't found a link for it yet.
Debugging? Klingons do not debug. Bugs are good for building character in the user.
.... erm... this from aol.... oh... never mind.
I've been trying to talk my mother off of AOL for years and onto one of the lower cost broadband offerings. She always replys that she doesn't want to lose her email address and it would be too difficult to tell everyone a new address. I heard that even though the address will be screenname@aim.com, AOL will continue to forward screenname@aol.com to the free account. Time for her to move on to faster access!
Does this mean that AOL is screwed? I don't think do. This means that they have finally figured out that the dial up business isn't going to last forever. Every month they lose a boatload of subscribers and that is money straight out of their pockets. At the same time Yahoo and Google are giving away many of the same services and making money hand over fist on advertising. With this new statagy AOL can continue to generate revenue from members who leave the paid dial up service. Who knows, they may even pick up new users. I'm happy with the webmail account I already have, but more compitition is a good thing.
dork.
AIM mail may provide a lot of space but it is not compelling compared to gmail.
I strongly suspect that it will be compelling for all those AIM users. How many non-techies know what POP and IMAP are? In my experience, all they care about is being able to check their email, and webmail access usually does that for them just fine.
I think this was a very smart move by AOL. Although, I do think they're idiots for not doing this long ago. Not that I've been following it closely, but it seems AOL has been lacking in the innovation department for some time. Case in point: why the heck haven't they started offering broadband?
This reminds me of a quote from somewhere that is applicable to this situation....
"Just how much money does Coke spend each year to gain 1/2 percentage point of marketshare away from Pepsi?"
Once markets have been established, unless you have a catalyst this is a waste of time and money. I can only imagine the committee they put together for this--"Absolutely! Free email! It will save us!"
The e-mail is not @aol.com it's @aim.com so the AOL screen name wouldn't give you the same e-mail address anyway.
"In times of universal deceit, telling the truth will be a revolutionary act." -George Orwell
It was then that I noticed that I could not log on to my screen name anymore. It had been Suspended. What a great surprise to wake up to.
Apparently, AOL's policy on free services is as follows: "You can use our free services as much as you like. If, however, you ever give us money, you have to continue doing so to keep using the free things. If you don't, suck it up and make another account."
Really. I called tech support and spent roughly 2 hours talking to various people, trying to get them to convert my account to a free AIM account. According to the people I talked to, their database supports conversion of AIM accounts into AOL subscriber accounts, but going the other way is not supported for some reason. They actually suggested that I make a new screen name "like your old one with a number after it". No! I want my screen name, not a new one!
I ultimately got a new AIM account for IMing, but it was terribly annoying. I had lost my entire buddy list, profile, and other account data. That sucked. They said that if I waited 6 months or so, my account would be purged and I could possible make it again, but I didn't feel like waiting that long.
In conclusion, once you become a subscriber, you're stuck that way forever. Unless, of course, you don't mind the hassle of making a new account.
I own itburns.net. What should I put there?
i used aol dial-up for free for 6 months until broadband (cable) was available in the area. i popped in a one month, unlimited hours disk. everytime i went to cancel they said, keep trying it for another month - for free. that lasted until broadband finally arrived.
always mosh clockwise
Now you can also use your AIM screen name as your e-mail address*
Enjoy the convenience of using your AIM screen name as your e-mail address-and take advantage of new and improved features, like:
Spam and Anti-Virus Protection: Industry-leading security tools help keep your mailbox free of annoying junk mail and harmful viruses.
Seamless Integration: Save time by sending an e-mail from your buddy list or replying to an e-mail with an IM.
Message Status: Easily check the status of the messages you send to other AIM or AOL Mail users to see if they've been read or not. You can even "Unsend" one of these messages if no one has read it.
Additional Features: Get all the features you expect, including enhanced spell-checking, auto-addressing, rich-text formatting, message signatures and more!
* If you have an AOL screen name, you can already enjoy all of these benefits and more using AOL.com mail.
first of all, are we getting a real email address? ie (screenname@aim.com) which you can give to people where they can email you directly without going through aim.
second the feature sounds awfully like icq or msn where when someone's offline, you can send them a message to their inbox.
third, will i be able to access the email without using aim's software (ie through webmail or a pop3/imap client). i'd hate to be restricted to 1 program for my email.
HD Trailers
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Looks like the AOL mods are in the house. Bah.
Mod parent "+1 omfglolbbq!!!!!!!!two!!!!"
Hey AOL, you already have Netscape mail - how about fixing it up with tweaking the crappy interface, adding spam blocking, etc? Nothing has been done with Netscape Mail since you purchased them - unless you count using the Netscape mail client to access Netscape mail.
come on AOL, don't be a Newb!
Google: Let's start our own free email service to compete with Yahoo and MSN. We'll give people 2GB of storage to get their attention, and hopefully, we'll become a larger part of their internet experience. Oh, and being Google, let's make our system work far, far, better than most college email systems.
AOL: ME TOO!!!11!!1!
I'll certainly be getting one of their accounts, in addition to my Hotmail, Yahoo and Gmail accounts. So far, I have a Yahoo account forwarding to my Gmail account so that I get the combined effectiveness of both the Yahoo and Gmail spamfilters. There can be no harm in trying a new service and having so many email accounts like this, because they are all free services so you have no initial outlay on them!
Free Web Mail?!?!? What a brilliant idea!
In a related story, Yahoo and Hotmail called AOL to welcome them to 1997.
"I planned within my means and got a fixed rate mortgage, so where's MY bailout?" -cafepress
I'll keep an eye on how quick the internet traffic rates and the rates to my mail servers go up...
[%] Cingular Ringtones
Normally this is true and the savings are minimal, but every so often there's one of those funny binary files that everyone you know seens to send to everyone on their address lists, when this happens you have the potential to save a reasonable amount of storage. For an individual it isn't going to be much in total but, when you're storing the amount of information Google does, it can add up fairly fast.
Have a think about what's in an email message. Parts of the message will differ between users. The headers are the most obvious candidate here. For anyone thinking that the would all be the same for the same sent mail, consider what I do. I have my own personal domain & host a small web site on a dynamic ip, but for obvious reaasons I don't have my domain's email sent there, it all gets redirected to my gmail account.
Parts of the message can be manipulated by the users. The obvious ones are read and replied flag, folder or gmail labels, but there's probably more. If you've written your own email software which parts that applies to should be well known, otherwise you'll need to read the source.
If you then divide the message into variable and fixed parts it's trivial to hash the fixed part to get a key that can be used to determine if you already have that message in storage and only keep one copy of the fixed information.
You could extend this even further and split the message further giving large attachments their own storage. Once you've done this you can do some interesting things. Improved detection of image based spam is just one that comes to mind.
POP3 with leaving mail on the server is a barely usable kludge. It sucks especially when you have to check from all sorts of places. IMAP is so much more flexible - you can use it LIKE a local client, but you're not forced to. You can also use it remotely, through a web mail gateway (squirrelmail is excellent if you host your own), you can use a terminal client (ie mutt), you can use a nice client like the mac Mail.app. Everything you do across any client is reflected on all the other clients. Gmail has nice search capabilities, but so does mutt, grep, and the Mail.app 2.0 spotlight feature. This doesn't even take into account the awesomeness of having shell access to your mail server to be able to use everything from procmail to clamav to amavis.
For most people, webmail is alright. For email jockeys, it really isn't. I'd venture to say that POP3 is even worse than just using straight webmail.
Are you sure about that? The help says that you can't use a regular email client, such as outlook. It's web-only.
If there is IMAP access, what are the server names?
Haha!
AIM mail offers free IMAP, gmail does not.
And who cares about pop3.
Huge graphic ads when I go to the inbox. Adblock for some reason has a little popup for the folder listing (wtf). It looks light and nice but it's got nothing on gmail.
I am not impressed. Did anyone else get an error at mail.aol.com?
Now anyone can be an internet (l)user without paying a dime to AOL!
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
If you think that a corporation is limited to standard free AIM accounts then you're seriously mistaken. A quick glance through AIM@Work shows that corporations have the ability to restrict logins based on IP#, authenticate against the corporation's LDAP server, provide users with person@corporation.com chat names to match corporate e-mail addresses, encryption via certificates, and other features that cater to corporate IM needs. This is perfect when you want to deal with other corporations while giving your company a presence in an incredibly populated IM service. This is great because you don't want to go giving ALL of your client's accounts on your corporate Jabber server... A perfect example of this all are those mac.com chat addresses that Apple gives out with their mac.com subscription. You know who those people are affiliated with as soon as they IM you. AIM@Work is good business. It's much more flexible and secure than regular AIM and it's MUCH more widely used than private Jabber (or whatever else) servers.
On top of all that, even a standard AIM account is capable of securing IM's by using things like OTR so it doesn't matter how many 3rd party servers the messages go through. Besides, saying that people shouldn't communicate through 3rd party servers is like saying "call them on a purely POTS telephone line." It's pretty much impossible. Every online communication standard goes through 3rd party servers, and this even includes things that aren't considered online, such as your long distance, your cell phone, and probably your local land line.
4848
<ohm> damn
<ohm> FUCK
<ohm> DAMN
<ohm> i was just in an AIM convo with a chick, and my grandmother's window pops up
<ohm> FUCK
<ohm> i go like this to her
<ohm> "i want to suck on your clit"
<ohm> FUCK
I know most people out there don't use Mac, but I tell ya, Adium is the best chat software I've ever used. Better than Gaim (no disrespect), better than trillian, and even better than the other Mac multi-service chat clients. It's got web-based CSS compliant visual themes that you can customize, animated icons, custom soundsets, etc. etc.. Gaim definitely comes in second though, and is clearly the best for linux. I love that app. But really, I'd use anything except the standard chat clients of ANY of these services, except when video is necessary... *sigh*
usercontents.css
make that userContent.css.
Just look at the users they are advertising to...someone who doesn't know what virus scanning is or spam filtering....worse yet probably doesn't even own or use virus protection. Not to mention their recent "we own everything you slide across our network" policy. All I am going to say about this one
"We are all Aliens until we get to know one another."
I've got about six hundred gmail accounts to give away if anyone is even considering using this service.
It Is the Nature of Information to Transgress Artificial Boundaries
To call their new system AIM Mail, when they're changing AIM to Triton. Looks like they're getting ahead of themselves. Er... Perhaps behind? Yeah, definately behind.
It took me a while to remember my old AIM login and password, but once I was logged in I found no evidence of the Mailblocks challenge/response system. Looks like they adopted only the Mailblocks webmail interface.
So does this mean my grandmother might now realize that AOL isn't the only way to access the innanet? You think maybe I can convince her that paying 25 dollars a month for something AOL now offers for free is idiotic? You think maybe AOL will stop shoving itself down the publics throat? No, wait, this is just another way to get more morons to pay extra for their services... American public hears the words free and they will pay anything for it...
-jÆ Nana korobi ya oki
In the UK, AOL do offer broadband, either over DSL or over cable. http://www.aol.co.uk/broadband
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Hmmm. Not in the United States: http://www.aol.com/broadband/
"AOL Over [existing] Broadband." I think such a product is profoundly pointless. Heck, I get "unlimited" dial-up internet access with Juno for half the price of this "AOL Over [existing] Broadband." Why on earth would anyone pay for this?
Sorry, I just wanted to rant.
Why on earth would anyone pay for this?
For all that excellent AOL content, the parental controls, and that warm fuzzy feeling, of course.
It is surprisingly popular.
GMail will offer IMAP before it's out of beta. Trust me. I read it on a blog that got over 5 TrackBack pings.
Well, now that I think about it, I can understand parents liking the parental controls and anti-virus software if that's included.
:)
I still think "AOL Over [existing] Broadband" is pointless.
According to the FAQ, AIM Mail does not support IMAP.