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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???
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.
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! :)
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
What, and type five more characters? Not me. Never. No Way. Uh-uh.
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).
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.
lost they are. Attempting to regain market share they are. Hmmm, desperate they are.
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
Anyone know the IMAP settings?
they're simply another commodity asset of the provider.
I'd go as far as to say that it isn't so much that the user is the product.
In traditional capitalism, the end user paid money to get a product or service. Now that we are entering more of an information age, the end user basically has to endure advertising instead of paying money. The "contract" is that the information given is good/entertaining enough. The hope is, of course, that the end user ends up purchasing products advertised. But this would basically require that most of the economy is run in a traditional model, otherwise none of those advertising dollars would be offered up.
This is no different than the economic model that television broadcasting has run on for the last half century or so. Ironically, this means that it does not make sense for a network TV station to put out quality programming. If the viewers are the product, then the TV stations want the product to be as high quality as possible. In this case, highest quality means easist to influence by advertising. So, TV stations must then put out mostly lowest common denominator programming in order to attract the customers which will make them the most money.
I'll never make that mistake again, reading the experts' opinions. - Feynman
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?
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?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
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!
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 think the open IMAP access is not be switched on yet. But as far as I know, that is the plan... from the eWeek article:
"AOL already is planning additional features for the full launch of AIM Mail. The service will support the IMAP (Internet Message Access Protocol) standard so that users can access their AIM Mail accounts from other e-mail clients, Ben-Yoseph said."
I will update my blog when I have more info.