AOL executives announced in New York on Wednesday that their trailblazing Internet company would give away virtually every service it now offers for a monthly subscription charge, with income coming from advertising instead.
In the eyes of the plan’s supporters, this would let the company catch up with Google, Yahoo, eBay, Microsoft and other Internet media powers that have been making money in recent years by grabbing most of the fast-growing amount of ads moving to the Internet.
It is such a radical plan by one of the biggest Internet brands out there that it is likely to cement the long-term business model for Web media as ad-supported.
The new plan calls for AOL to let people use its proprietary software to access the Internet free. AOL.com e-mail addresses and most of its existing information, downloads and services would also be free.
One analyst noted, AOL had “tried other revival moves before with little transformational success.”
“This one seems to make sense,” she said, “but so did their other strategies.”
Great picture:
Makes me think of the song Too Much Time On My Hands by Styx.
http://music.yahoo.com/track/1058101
But why would you want AOL services installed on your system?
It’s a little too late in the game to gain market percentage when Google and Yahoo already have a customer base.
It’s free and I bet you still can’t cancel your account.
So when are we going to be moving back to the 90’s model where everything was free with ad support, and nobody made any new money.
Seriously Mike, this really reminds me of the 90s. Before you know it we’ll be getting ads for pet food on our free AOL addresses.
Email addresses defined.
AOL.com = *really* old Internet users or *really* ignorant ones.
Yahoo/Hotmail = Internationals / students / mainstream.
Gmail.com = The more cutting edge crowd / students.
So who wants an @aol address now?
Well said, Mike.
Drew, if you want to be cutting edge you have to run your own mail server. If your a real smarty pants you can even put a web front end (like SquirrelMail) on it.
Anyone remember when Netzero was free and ad supported (unless you had the crack)? What happened with them?
I remember Prodigy, compuserve, and others.
FREE services??
I already get those from other companies that charge
Ahem.. back in the 90s when I used AOL, I never paid for it. Those accounts died quickly after a couple weeks. 🙂
BTW wouldn’t a quick way to end your AOL account is if you were able to stop paying the monthly bill? I know AOL billing is automatic, but isn’t there a way to tell your bank or CC company to stop accepting payments to them?
I remember just before I got my cable modem, there was a slew of free dialup ISP that required their own dialer app so ads would appear proper and could control you. But there were ways around that by simply setting up the proper dialup-networking. All you had to figure out was what your login name was w/ your password, and you bypassed all thier ads and crap. It was so easy back then it was their downfall. Those free ISPs lasted all but about 6 months or so.
Free!!!! That’s still too expensive! They should pay me to use their “(dis)services”.
they are going to be Advert based.
Talk about money…WOW..JUMP off the band wagon QUICK before they give Everyone your info.
Lock down your IE or FF, and goto the front page of MSN.
Watch it go nuts. Last test I did, it had about 16 virus and bots from adverts.
I never could understand why anyone had to join anything; my local telco co-op supplies everything from dial-up to top tier DSL, no muss, no fuss. Cheap, too.
But I reinstalled an O/S for a friend a few years back, and she just had to have her AOL. I remember connecting, then a message saying “Installing Additional Software” and then her monitor seemed to fill up with program short cuts. Scared me, but she said that’s the way she wanted it. Different strokes, I guess.
Meanwhile, AOL is pulling out of Europe. Are the two events connected?