AOL going free

AOL is going to give it's service for free to those who already have high
speed internet (Not through them). The catch is they will have advertizing

JD Cooper...

'fraid they wouldn't get my biz if they paid me.

Jean B....

Kind-of sad, but even without the advertising, and for free, I
have negative interest in trying AOL.

Arch (TX)...

No thank you! I was on AOL when I first started, for about three or four
months. Even without advertising..."No thank you"! I guess you could say
that I just don't care for AOL.

Paco...

I had them once. They put their stuff all over my computer (inside) all
hidden and everywhere I went later I found AOL programs.....

Sue...

I had them once, also. It cost me mucho money as each time I went on line
I was dialing a long distance #. What did I know? I was a newbie.
sue....sadder but wiser now. LOL

david...

uh-oh.... looks like I'm the designated defender of AOL... whoodathunk,
ever in their dreams... :)) To me, the Internet business model has been
changing and AOL once had a very thriving business. Now, as the model is
changing, AOL is trying to shift services to compete with the likes of
Yahoo and MSN.... (just my opinion, of course....)

this has been slowly happening over past few months. and isn't a bad
thing... AOL is expanding away from just a private web service and
competing more with other open providers, such as yahoo. for example,
they give a free website, free photo storage, a free blog, free music,
free e-mail account -- really more than you might receive from Yahoo and

mmj1...

Gee instead of my worrying that A-B might follow along with many companies
and cut out health insurance for retirees with the help of you guys maybe
they'll increase benefits. Yeah, like that's a chance. :-)

mmj1...

Thank heavens for you, David. Two bottles a year doesn't help much but I get
a small check from them every month and I need it!! So could you possibly
work up to maybe four a year??

tough competition for MSN... and their free music site is one of the
best - I like to listen to renaissance music and they have it... ...
they have called their expansion process a 'screenname', similar to MSN's
'passport'. There may be more, but I'm aware of at least this much.

for example, I was playing around with AOL a month or so ago and created
a website at
fancy, but I only spent 5 minutes creating it - and there are no more ads
than on other such sites... :)

I also created a simple blog just for experimenting - I cut and pasted
some text I had already written - took maybe 5-10 minutes, but the ads
seem similar to other such sites...

they still provide an ISP service and there are many people who like
having everything handled for them... being on the internet via a proxy
server, as AOL is, provides more safety and control and some like it.
It's probably an ideal ISP for people totally new to the Internet who
have no geeky friends.... (uh,,, is a geek every a friend... oops... i
digress...)

My guess is that we'll think differently of AOL in just a few years. In a
way, they're sorta' like Microsoft... we curse them, but, like microsoft,
AOL brought many first-timers to the Internet...

(goldang soapbox... I keep gittin' on it and i'm gonna' git shot down
soon, for sure.... )

JD Cooper...

One problem... AOL started out as a "content" provider, not in internet
to. ((heh... I was gonna add: "After that time, AOL was stuck with tons

Arch (TX)...

You are right, but it has also brought several tons of news friends from
all over the world. God Bless Them!

JD Cooper...

10-4 good buddy!

mmj1...

You got that right, Arch. I love my Internet friends. I'd be lost and lonely
without them.

of ninnies who could not adapt to the changing nature of the internet
and who remained in a bottle fed stupor for ever and ever, amen." but
changed my mind and did not add it.))

**Dalin**...

Why don't we just glue your feet to it with superglue?

Michael Fanner...

Waste of time. It's a well known fact that the only thing that superglue
sticks is skin to skin. Probably be better off with Araldite. Mind you,
you'd have to shoot him anyway so's he'd stay still long enough for the
Araldite to set.

Upside is, you'd never part him from that goldang soapbox ever again. ;-)

Paco...

That's like webtv. No offense, webtvers (I was one myself.)

david...

there's friends and there's friends... :) i'm sure allathet wuz meant as a
compliment... :)

**Dalin**...

Yabut once we stick his feet to it we'll saw it down until it's just a
flat board, then we can nail that to the floor so he can't find
another one.

**Dalin**...

Wonderful idea! And maybe just out of reach, so he has to step off,
is a nice cold beer. :-) But wait - he only drinks about two beers a
year, maybe a nice bottle of bourbon. :-)

on their sites....