• 06 Jul 2006 at 10:11 AM
  • AOL

Would you use AOL even if they gave it away?

By John Carney

There’s something a little embarrassing when someone gives you their email address and it ends with “aol.com.” It’s like meeting a new acquaintance who has his fly down. Do you tell them?
Now word comes that AOL CEO Jonathan Miller has a plan to stem the continuing decline in AOL’s subscriber base—he wants to give it away to anyone with a high-speed internet connection. Revenues will come from advertising. We’re not sure where they came up with this innovative idea but it strikes us as brilliant. It could revolutionize the internet. Free pants without zippers for everyone!

AOL may offer free high-speed connection to Web-WSJ [Reuters]

Comments (9)

  1. 1
    Posted by Chris | July 6, 2006 at 11:23 AM

    Ha! AOL is dumb. If you’re new to the Internet, it’s great. After a few weeks of learning how to type www dot domain dot com, it’s pointless to have.

  2. 2
    Posted by Sue | July 6, 2006 at 11:34 AM

    one reason for staying with aol…….everyone knows it; family has it’s mailboxes there.

  3. 3
    Posted by John Carney | July 6, 2006 at 1:11 PM

    That’s a good point. But they are losing subscribers even while the use of the internet grows.
    That said, we have nothing against AOL users. Some of our best friends are AOL users.

  4. 4
    Posted by Anonymous | July 6, 2006 at 2:09 PM

    aol.com is not an embarassing email address, there are 25 million other people using it. I would think it would be embarassing to be one of only 10 people using dealmaker.com as an address.

  5. 5
    Posted by Anonymous | July 6, 2006 at 2:10 PM

    what’s embarassing about aol.com as an email address, there are 25 million other people using it? I would think it would be embarassing to be one of only 10 people using dealbreaker.com as an address.

  6. 6
    Posted by Elizabeth Spiers | July 6, 2006 at 3:41 PM

    Riiiiight. You have an AOL address, don’t you?

  7. 7
    Posted by Anonymous | July 6, 2006 at 4:54 PM

    wouldn’t have anything else

  8. 8
    Posted by Danny | July 6, 2006 at 10:08 PM

    free stuff? this is soooooooo netscape-ish it’s not even funny.

  9. 9
    Posted by Kevin | July 8, 2006 at 4:08 PM

    I’ve used AOL email for years – mainly because AOL had dial-up access all over the world and I traveled a lot. Now I keep AOL email address because everybody knows it.
    But …. I am getting increasingly annoyed with AOL software that seems to ingratiate itself into every corner of Windows XP on my computer.
    I wouldn’t mind paying AOL a little bit per month for the email address but I’m thinking about using Eudora for an email program, keeping the AOL addresses, but wiping all the AOL software off my computer.

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