AOL to Open Up Content to Public

[AN-net]

The New York Times reported in its business section yesterday that AOL plans to introduce a free portal somewhat like Yahoo!'s. The portal will contain content that was never available to the public before but only to subscribers. There still will be exclusive content for subscribers though. This comes as AOL subscribers keep dropping at the value of AOL has dropped from $164 billion to $8 billion is period of about 6 years. AOL hopes with this new portal it can compete with other web conglomerates such as Google and Yahoo!. With content available to the public, AOL hopes many SE's will index its content and more traffic will flow to their site, thus making more people become subscriber and get the exclusive content.

AOL is making a few other changes, they follow Yahoo! and Google by giving away free email but not at AOL.com but at AIM.com. Another dramatic change is the format of ads on the AOL network. They have now made them standards complient so they are able to compete with the many Ad Networks across the web.

In the end most analysts see the demise of AOL because as technology progresses AOL seems to not.

[Dean C]

AOL is a joke - simple as that.

[Corriewf]

I have aol simply for the email addy I have had since 96.

[Brad]

Originally Posted by Dean C

AOL is a joke - simple as that.

Agreed, there is no reason to pay that much money for a dial-up isp when I can get one cheaper locally, with less crap (in other words no programs to install), and a real person to talk to when I call support that knows what they are talking about.

Honestly there is no reason to use AOL, their 'exclusive content' can be found elsewhere on the internet anyway.

My mom signed up for AOL once, and the devil came and killed her. More or less thats what happened, and it's the damn truth