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AOL Launches Free Webmail Service

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the aol-instant-email dept.

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."

4 of 207 comments (clear)

  1. Open Mind by Blakey+Rat · · Score: 4, Funny

    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
    1. Re:Open Mind by juberti · · Score: 5, Informative

      Seriously. I mean, at least try the product first.

      The AOL spam filters have gotten quite good over the past couple years, better than Yahoo/Hotmail and way better than that of your typical cable operator. The web interface is really nice (Mailblocks). There's free IMAP access. And if you use AIM, there's good integration between AIM and AIM Mail. Clearly I'm biased, but I think it's a great product.

      If you have an AIM account, you can try it out at http://mail.aol.com/ . If not, you can create an AIM account at https://my.screenname.aol.com/_cqr/registration/in itRegistration.psp.

      Some more info at my blog: http://journals.aol.com/juberti/runningman

  2. Won't be too bad by iosmart · · Score: 4, Funny

    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! :)

  3. Re:AOL? by profet · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Hrm... So you use AIM for corporate IM?

    Sounds like a standup company... Please let me know which one it is so that I know not to give them any of my personal details...

    JBlowCorpDivX: Hey John, what is Jane Doe's current balance? Account number XXXXXX, SSN: XXX-XX-XXXX
    JDoeCorpDivY: No idea Joe, so how about them yankees?

    Fantastic. Tell the people in charge to invest in an internal purpose built IM solution. One that doesn't involve using a third party's servers.