AOL To Be Free For Broadband Users?

mikesd81 writes "AOL may give away more services including its AOL.com accounts reserved for paying customers. They have a proposal under consideration which calls for Time Warner's online unit to stop charging subscription fees to users who have high-speed Internet access or even dial-up service from a rival provider. Under the plan the company would continue to charge the fees for those needing dial-up access through AOL. The AOL software also would allow subscribers to continue using instant messaging, Web journals and other services without having to download separate software or figure out Web-based options. That would ease the transition and encourage them to keep using AOL services, the person familiar with the matter said."

Yea, but...

then you'd have to use AOL.

Can someone tell me?

What is the point of AOL?

Re:Can someone tell me?

me too!

Re:Can someone tell me?

Maybe its just me but every time I see AOLers written down I confuse it with the word 'assholes'.

Re:Can someone tell me?

What is the point of AOL?

Those who have been saying for years that AOL content adds no value to what can be had in the wilds of the internet now have proof: Time-Warner will stop charging for AOL content.

What a long, embarrassing fall for the online company whose stock was once so valuable that it could buy a major cable company!

Re:Can someone tell me?

Got me. AOL is one of those things that, even free, still isn't worth it.

At one point, my company had a "strategic business partnership" with AOL to provide personal Internet service for its employees. Everyone got free AOL accounts for a year. Most of the IT group didn't use them, we knew better. The people I know who did had nothing but trouble, and I don't know anyone who renewed their subscription when the free year ran out. The company didn't do it again. I think that the plan got nixed when all the employess started calling our help desk asking why their Internet at home wasn't working.

Oh well, lesson learned, I suppose.

If AOL were free . . .

. . . only newbies would use AOL. Oh, wait! ;-)

Q: Does it still suck?

A: Yes, but it sucks 10 times faster.

In related news...

In related news the CIA has issued a press release that they will be working with AOL to make version 10.0 the "most secure version ever" in the interests of the American Public.

So?

I could get AIDS for free, too. That doesn't make it desirable.

Re:So?

Oh shit! This guy made a joke with the word AIDS in it! Quick! Mod him to hell!

He was just making a point/joke, give him a break.

Re:So?

You're on Slashdot. Your left hand can't give you AIDS. So, no... it won't be free for you.

Strings attached!

The AOL access may be free, but they are going to start charging for the install CDs.

Stab, ow?

Stabbing yourself in the face is free, too, but it's still not a good idea.

AOL

I guess too many people figured out AOL wasn't 'The Internet'?

AOL is the epitomy of corporate addware

My mother (in spite of my protestations) has used AOL for years.

She's stopping now though, because even though she pays a high monthly subscription, she gets bombarded with adverts from AOL, even while their addware and spyware 'zapper' is running.
There are even usually two adverts on the logoff screen.

I can't beleive it, but they've actually managed to suck more.

How can I lose?

Bang that crayon a little further up my nose, Moe. Woo hoo! AOL! How can I lose?

Sounds reliable...

the person familiar with the matter said

Sounds like a reliable source of information to me. No, I didn't read the article. But how did that make it onto the front page? It's not news, it's gossip.

That's like saying...

..."internet to be free for paid internet subscribers." NO idea what the AOL for Broadband business model ever was, except deception.

Free Software

Now if only it was open source, then we could look at the code, comment out all of the code, then it would be a more worthwhile product.

omg enough with the speculation already

this is the fourth "story" in a row that has a question for a title.

Wasn't AOL always free ?

I mean they never let you cancel. "Please try AOL free for 50 more days"

I dont understand

I dont understand why anyone would do this.

Everyone I know that's gone to broadband from AOL did it as much to escape the confines/ads/annoyances of the AOL software as for the speed. Why would you voluntarily restrict yourself to using their browser when you could be using Firefox?

Furthermore, the people that have broadband (granted, not as much today, but still) are the people that are a bit more technically savvy and want more out of their internet connection/experience. Why on earth would any of these people want AOL?

New and Improved Crap!

Sounds like yet another useless portal site, but with the added annoyance of having to use a special client to interact with it. If they're looking for market share, that's about the worst way they could go about doing it.

Net Neutrality in reverse

AOL is incentivizing people to leave their paid network. AOL subscribers would in effect be subsidizing people that use access through other providers. AOL lowers its own hardware usage and maintenance costs, all those modem banks out there, while still getting some eyeballs to come see the paid ads etc. on their services, which cost little per viewer to maintain.

A weird business plan. So weird, it just might work!

But is it still AOL.

Which free?

Free as in speech? Or free as in beer? Hopefully, it's only the latter. I'd hate to have to start saying GNU/AOL all the time.

But..

Does it still work with AOHell?

Uh, I think I'm missing something.

And anybody cares, why?

Makes sense, so why now...?

Aol may be proposing to provide free access to services to subscribers that already have internet access. That sounds like it makes alot of sense, if you want the aol service.

When I worked a short job in telephone tech support, I could never understand why someone would want aol in addition to DSL/cable/etc. I actually worked people through getting them connected to the Internet (and proved it by getting them to CNN/Yahoo/Slashdot/etc. but they didn't think they were actually connected until the aol software decided that it wanted to connect (I passed them off to aol for support since they are connected to the Internet).

I guess I just don't understand the business side of technology services. This proposed free access for highspeed subscribers should have been done years ago. Better very late (if they do it), than absolutely never, I guess.

Red-Letter Day

Wow. Mark today's date, 4692 September 1993 [wikipedia.org], on your calendars.

I don't know about you

But as for me I know my day wouldn't be complete without an announcement of yet "more" spyware that can be freely stuck on my PC or those of my "users" Thank you AOL. Really. I mean it :).

AOL just can't fool the n00bs anymore.

0Back when the internet started picking up steam in Joe User's home, there weren't as many popular sites that the general people knew about. It actually took some effort to find something you were looking for. Now, you hear about every site there is to be soon from friends, TV news, and any other place you can think of. But then, these people saw the AOL screen. "Hey, buttons for Entertainment, News, Sports, this is so much easier." So now that all these URL thingamabobs are now common knowledge, who needs the crappy buttons and sloppy interface for double(or more) the price of any other dialup provider?

WOW...

If we didn't want to use it when it came in the mail, why in the world would we care that it's free now??

Mistake in the summary

Should be, "AOL users to start getting what they pay for".

Anyone else think that I should be an editor?

This is already in effect

...for TWC customers in Columbus, OH. I have a free account with them. I use it for testing.

They did notify me, however, that if I don't cancel AOL before I switch providers, they will begin to charge my account. Ahh, AOL...

But..

Would you all use AOL if they redesigned their software and used Mozilla as the base for the browser?

I would consider it if the damn software didn't act like a virus like norton. Also, they can put all ads in an iframe.

Speculation, but what if...

This has something to do with that purchase of AOL stock by Google [washingtonpost.com] some time ago?

Great! Now I can say...

..."I wouldn't use AOL even if it were free" and people would know that I really meant it. Now I'm waiting for AOL to pay me to use it.

I just signed up and cancelled my aol account...

I just signed up for an aol account to see how hard it would be to cancel it.

I signed up online, gave my credit card info and such. I didn't download their software or anything and just called the customer service number that was on the post-signup screen and selected the "cancellation" option. They made me wade through a relatively obnoxious "privacy" screening in order to sit on hold for 7-8 minutes.

Finally a guy picked up and asked me for all the information all over again. He asked how he could help me and I said, "I'd like to cancel my account, please." He started going into a bit about asking me why and such and I repeated, "I'd like to cancel my account, please." He noted that I'd signed up that day and started to ask again why I wanted to cancel and I, again, repeated, "I'd like to cancel my account, please." He then said he would process my account cancellation and informed me that all the services would continue to be available to me through the aol.com homepage (as this article stated).

He said there would be an account cancellation confirmation email in the next 24 hours. Hopefully that actually happens.

I just hurt this guy's save rate.. if he loses his job, maybe it's for the best. Fight Club-esque, ya know.

You get...

...what you pay for.

Its STILL over-priced.

So now what is AOL gonna do when one of these free accounts wants to cancel? Offer 6 months of double-secret free service?

The good side

My initial reaction was somewhere between "Who cares?" and "Why bother?" - but there's one hidden gem in this pile of broken glass. A lot of my family members won't even attempt to quit AOL because they'd have to change their email address. If they could keep it, but change their ISP (either to broadband or to a dial-up service that doesn't suck quite as hard or b0rk their computer), then that might be the thing that gets 'em to switch. They'll be happier, I'll be happier, and we can all move on and forget AOL ever existed.

True story of AOL cluelessness...

I have a good friend who is a senior comptroller for Time-Warner in Atlanta (worked his way up from Turner Sports). Shortly after the merger in 2000, AOL was looking for ways to "monetize" relationships with TW's vendors. They noticed that many millions of dollars were being payed each year to a satellite communications company.

"Tell them they must advertise on [the TW stations], or we'll open up a dialog with their leading competitor," they said. My friend had to explain to them, using very simple words, that this was the company which sent the TV signals to the cable systems around the world, and they had no need to advertise. It took multiple meetings with the PHB's from AOL to convince them that this would be a bad idea.

Like Ron White says, you can't fix stupid...

translation

I think AOL is probably relevant to about .05% of Slashdot users.

the .05% of Slashdot users who care are the ones that feel extremely sorry for the idiots still using AOL.

AOL has been obselete since the second half of the 90s and shouldn't be paid for in any circumstance, what AOL is finally doing is placing the proper price on its service.

AOL's main features are totally useless to anyone (but were revolutionary at the time of introduction)
- AOL Keywords: Wow, if I don't type WWW then I'll get a smaller web page with AOL logos all over it, and less information! If I click on any of the links though, it'll probably just take me to the rest of the internet anyway...
- Integrated web, email, and buddy list: It was a great feature when there was no taskbar.
- Spam/Spyware/Virus blockers: Besides being slow memory hogs, you could avoid spam and spyware a lot better if you just didn't install AOL.

Wow I didn't realize that AOL only had three features until just now. I'm so glad I dumped it 10 years ago.

Brilliant. Really.

This is the sort of turnaround that everybody wishes monolithic corporations could make. Well, now AOL / Time Warner is making one. It's pretty easy to recognize that charging people for access to AOL's information services alone is not a viable business model. We constantly make fun of them for it, or at least I did. AOL for Broadband?

AOL's brand has started to really hurt lately. Ma and pa are beginning to dislike them, and so this is AOL doing the best move they can: Cut the crap, scale down the profit drive, and return to services. AOL is still a very valuable brand name, and it can still be salvaged for future use. If they immediately stop aggravating customers and do their best to play nice while Time Warner scales them down, the brand can once again have value.

We always blast away at companies for driving themselves into the ground by refusing to change. And yeah, AOL has been and still is a pretty dark beast in some spots. But despite this, AOL is doing the hardest thing a mega-corporation can do: admit their blunder, and try to change. In addition to mocking their shameful past, some positive, if exasperated, attention should be spent to note this move toward the right direction.

I have to post a disclaimer to ward off the astroturf melters, though. No, I am not an AOL employee. No, I do not own AOL stock. No, I have no personal or professional stake in AOL at all. Yes, I -am- thoroughly intoxicated.

AOL image couldn't be worse

Talk about a brand with no respect in the market. Other companies would have rebranded or shown major changes. Seems that the longer AOL remains the longer it'll be seen as a pathetic company/product.

Wait until it starts loosing more customers because of the stories they read on the media. The company will implode like a black hole, taking Time Warner with them.

/Waiting for the next stories from future customers trying to cancel their account

I wrote the Upside "AOL doesn't suck" cover story

Long, long ago, in a millenium far, far away, my partner and I wrote Upside Magazine's cover story "AOL Doesn't Suck". The title came because editor Richard Brandt emailed me saying "Everybody knows AOL sucks" and I wrote back "No it doesn't!"

But that was then, in the brief period when AOL shone as a dial-up ISP, when the chat rooms beat most alternatives, when alternate IM systems weren't widespread, when there were few good forums anywhere (Usenet had already been wrecked and the software for the alternatives wasn't there yet), when some of its content was competitive, and so on.

Now -- well, it's sucked for a long time now. What a waste.

That said, I've been meaning to do a piece on how net-nonneutrality would turn the whole internet into AOL. This throws a monkeywrench into that plan ...

Let's be honest

"(AOL praising) the person familiar with the matter said"
Let's not mince words. You've been talking to mr. Anonymous Cowards, haven't you?

making the final switch

My neighbor recently got a new laptop and it came with wireless, so I moved her over to using my WAP intead of her AOL dialup. She is of course loving the speed increase, but she still pays the monthly AOL subscription, mostly because she has not weaned herself off her AOL email and onto my mailserver. AOL's deciding to not charge for the service and only for the dial-up will be a cost saver for her and many like her.

I can't help but wonder why they are doing this though? I don't use AOL myself, but I was under the impression that they didn't get hit by a lot of banners etc while say, accessing their AOL email. Where is AOL making money on these customers if not by charging them subscription fees?

No, the cat does not "got my tongue."

Do AIM users get email? If I quit AOL, could I still use my email there via the web site? If so, is there anything special I'd have to do to make myself an AIM user?

I have used AOL for years, but only as my "permanent" email address for online registrations of one sort or another. I currently run "BYOA", or their Bring Your Own Access plan.

It's tradition.

Duh...AOL has always been the king of free shit. I don't think I bought a blank 3.5" floppy disk from the mid-1990s onwards because of them. Just plain white Avery labels to cover them up with.

Re:It's tradition.

I'm eagerly awaiting the point when their software passes 700MB, so they can start using 1GB usb keys.

Re:Cool

Free crap is still crap.

TANSTAFS.

> Free shit!

If the editors can dupe the articles, us commenters can dupe the comments [slashdot.org] ... and to that end:

> > > > > Just because a bag of crap is free doesn't mean it's worth the hassle of obtaining it.
> > > > Horse shit!
> > > Free? My uncle sells manure at a good few pounds per bag. It's a good source of income.
> > Good source of income, eh? Must be good shit. Couldn't resist...
> I'll take a bag of the good shit please...

But as Heinlein would say... TANSTAFS.

From AOL's perspective, giving the shit away is probably a good business decision. AOL is as much a marketing organization / advertising agency than an ISP, and they probably make a lot more money selling their users' data as they do from ISP subscription fees.

Hence, give the shit away. The more eyeballs that stare at AOL's shit, the more shit comes through the tubes, and the more ad revenue AOL/TW brings in from advertisers eager to sell their shit.

So is gum under your chair.

Yeah, but so is gum under your chair.

Tell me when they pay me to use that crap.