Would you use AOL even if they gave it away?

Posted by John Carney, Jul 06, 2006, 10:11am

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]

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Posted in: AOL

Comments

Posted by Chris, Jul 06, 2006 11:23AM

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.

Posted by Sue, Jul 06, 2006 11:34AM

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

Posted by John Carney, Jul 06, 2006 1:11PM

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.

Posted by , Jul 06, 2006 2:09PM

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.

Posted by , Jul 06, 2006 2:10PM

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.

Posted by Elizabeth Spiers, Jul 06, 2006 3:41PM

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

Posted by , Jul 06, 2006 4:54PM

wouldn't have anything else

Posted by Danny, Jul 06, 2006 10:08PM

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

Posted by Kevin, Jul 08, 2006 4:08PM

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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