AOL Mail To Be Accessible Via IMAP

jfruhlinger writes "News.com.com is reporting that AOL's e-mail service, long accessible only via AOL's proprietary, monolithic app, will be available via IMAP starting Thursday. The story notes that this is part of a series of initiatives from AOL to move content beyond its walled garden and into standards-based formats such as HTML and IMAP that any Internet app can access. Supposedly a 'a dramatically different direction' for Netscape is in the works, too."

Wish AIM were next

[cygnusx]

I'd love AIM to be opened up, but I'm not holding my breath. Mail is a commodity now, and there is no obvious benefit in walling it up any more. But IM is dominated by the big three: AOL+ICQ, MSN and Yahoo. AOL has too much to lose by letting go, especially since its craptacular IM client is likely to be beaten hands down by Gaim or MSN Messenger.

AOL Communicator

[SpiffyMarc]

If AOL keeps this up, they might actually be taken seriously.

This seems to go hand-in-hand with the release of their AOL Communicator [aolepk.com] application... anything to save a sinking ship, I suppose.

I wonder what the new direction for Netscape is... how many people still trust the Netscape brand enough for them to get any legs out of it?

But who'd use it?

[go3]

Too bad that most people who would understand how to setup an IMAP account on Outlook quit AOL years ago.

Maybe...

[JoeShmoe950]

AOL is usually pretty realiable for dial up.
They've dropped the requirement of the browser. Maybe if they drop:
-The fee thats atleast $10 more than everyone else
-The buggy browser by default
-The advertisements (haven't used it for a while, does it still advertise when you sign on?)
More people will find it appealing, and the people who already use it will be happier

They Could Do THis All Along

[osewa77]

Well,

This goes to show that they could do this all along. They just needed a little nudge by Google's gmail. Competition always encourages innovation ;-)

Just Me [afriguru.com]

Um...

[Paulrothrock]

1) Geeks who know WTF IMAP is don't use AOL

2) People who use AOL don't really care how they get their mail as long as the nice man says "You've got mail!" and reminds them of that charming Meg Ryan/Tom Hanks flick

Too little too late ?

[Alcoyotl]

I'm not sure how this is going to help AOL in the ongoing battle between ISPs. Although this is a nice initiative for their customers, I don't think it's going to attract more punters on the sole basis of standards compatibility.

Besides, most of their ads bring the proprietary content forward as the added value. What will they use in the future ? Will they just become a plain vanilla ISP ?

Re:Yummy!

[0BoDy]

No, I ahve a friend that's supported thier "product for years" and there's specific thing built into AOL's Custom TCP/IP / PPP protocol stack that differ from the standard protocol versions, and the network drivers that AOL installs so it can do this also don't work with any of the standard TCP clients, so AOL has to negotiate the connection via their software. Also, AOL uses it's own modem drivers, which allows them to modify the actual handshake. Besides, the point of AOL is the software.

Thank GMail

[N8F8]

I think this is at least partly being driven by Google's GMail. My parents used AOL long after they changes ISPs because of email access. I'mn betting there are plenty of AOL customers waiting to jump ship at the promise of a gig of mail space without the popups.

Re:Wish AIM were next

[osewa77]

Locking in your customers to a product, even if it's not in the best interest of those customers, especially when you have the ability to open things up, is at best a short term strategy. As a company, you're trading goodwill for money. To succeed with this strategy, you hope you're in a market where the monetary value of the goodwill you lose doesn't exceed the extra money you get from the lock-in. You hope you don't have a company like Google or Microsoft (in compete mode) that is intent on giving the customer the best deal even if it costs more! Else you have to just open up like AOL just did. At least GMail won't be providing IMAP. my [afriguru.com] two cents.

Long distance

[tepples]

If you claim that nobody who knows about IMAP would use America Online, then what about those few geeks who live where AOL has a monopoly on Internet access, such as municipalities that have granted a monopoly to Time Warner cable or remote areas where AOL is the only dial-up that's not a long distance call?

And did the rehash of The Shop Around the Corner starring the Sleepless in Seattle leads have any scenes about spam?

Re:Maybe...

[generic-man]

They already did that. It's called Netscape Internet Service [getnetscape.com].

Re:Wish AIM were next

[Raven42rac]

You can use AIM Express from any browser, you have to allow the window itself to pop-up though. AIM even has a Linux client. Read all about it. [aim.com]Where IM is concerned, the market is cornered because the market is cornered. If someone were to come out with an awesome IM service, would anyone use it? "Hey, what's your AIM screen name?" 'I don't have one, I use Florbnab.' "What's that?" People already have established their screen names in various IM networks already, AIM, MSN, ICQ, IRC, etc.

IP stack and access to AOL content

[salvorHardin]

Didn't know that AOL's IP stack was drastically different to those of the rest of the world.
Presumably they've overcome this if they're opening up their core content to users of other ISPs via their Bring-Your-Own-Access [silicon.com] scheme.

Re:Wish AIM were next

[EricWright]

Maybe because AOL owns netscape, and the netscape IM client is nothing more than a re-branded AIM?

Re:They Could Do THis All Along

[Tin Foil Hat]

Yes, they certainly could have done this at any time. In fact, they have had a modified IMAP protocol for a long time that is accessible via Netscape Communicator. Of course Netscape can also access normal IMAP, so the hit to their customers is negligable.

FWIW, Hotmail also has a modified IMAP interface that is accessible via Outlook Express. One wonders if they will follow AOL's lead in this; it would not be all that difficult for them to do so.

Even Yahoo has a way to access their mail service via POP3, though it is restricted to pay accounts.

This is a big step for usability. There are some people who, for whatever reason, cannot use standard web-based email systems. Now they can access AOL mail with any IMAP client of their choosing.

Sorry, but this blankie is fine as it is.

[malia8888]

We fix computers for everyday home users. Many of them use AOL. They love the interface. I doubt even with the ability to use Microsoft Outlook that they will be getting their mail any way other than the way they always have.

This is what AOL does best. It provides a really stellar GUI for the people who are uneasy working with computers. I have watched these same consumers get visably shaken even venturing into Outlook Express. They want the AOL look and feel. Although I think it is progressive of AOL to offer the other email clients to their customers, I doubt if many of the committed AOL users will take advantage of this.

Re:Funny comment on NPR

[(trb001)]

For a number of reasons...

1) Everyone...old, young, stupid...knows what AOL is.

2) [e-mail] is easy to remember, sometimes easier than [e-mail].

3) If your target audience is a bunch of computer novices, because of #1 and #2 they're much, much more likely to remember your email addy @aol.com than @yourdomain.com. I'll even admit that when looking at a bunch of email addresses from my hockey team, the AOL addresses are easier to remember because I don't have to think about it, I just remember the screen name.

Remember...people who aren't geeks don't see AOL as a Horrible Thing (tm). Many of us here on Slashdot have set up our loved ones with AOL *because* it's so friggin easy to use and it's recognizable.

--trb

Re:Thank GMail

[snoopsk]

I don't think a gig of free space is worth the invasion of privacy. Google is only offering this much free storage because they want to read your email.

Re:Funny comment on NPR

[Anonymous Coward]

I have my own domain and I still use my AOL e-mail address -- because I've had that same address for over a decade, and changing it would be bad for my business.

An I missing something? How would it be bad for business? It's not like you need to stop checking your AOL account or anything.

Re:Funny comment on NPR

[Anonymous Coward]

Would you trust a business that used the address [e-mail] ? @aol's only slightly more respectable.

Also why is changing the email address you give out to people bad for business? You'll probably just end up using an automatic forwarder to send all your emails to your AOL box anyway

Re:Unofficial AOL Email FAQ

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, sure, I mean what kind of paranoid Slashdot twit would you be if you didn't automatically assume the most sinister explanation for everything?

addresses in slums

[Medievalist]

Um, nobody's suggesting your dad stop reading Email sent to his AOL address.

If your dad has a vanity domain such as www.blugu64sdad.com he could easily have all mail sent to [e-mail] automagically forwarded to his AOL account.

Then his business card would be much more impressive to anyone reading it, "Wow! He's internet-savvy, he has his own domain!" or "Wow! He's successful, he has an IT department to set up and run a domain for him!" instead of "Gee, he's got a lowbrow email addie, he must be technically incompetent".

Sorry to say but the real world actually does work like that. I know of several cases where vendors lost a sale simply for having an AOL or HotMail address.

Re:Hooray!

[Anonnymous Coward]

"The DMCA is good." --Steve Jobs
"The DMCA is good." --Microsoft

You Apple apologists need to get it through your heads--there is nothing special about Apple !!!. Apple's just as scheming and conniving as Microsoft, only not as good at it, which is why their platform monopoly only composes 5% of the PC market.

about time...

[Anonymous Coward]

compuserve - a similar onlin service(for those who can remember that far back) brought in ppp, pop3 and smtp support in about 1998 (ppp was actually done in about 95). Then AOL bought them out, you would have thought they might have tried to use a few of the good ideas of the company they'd bought.

Re:And the best IMAP Client is...

[bleak sky]

With regard to universities reading your email: use PGP. Encrypt anything that you don't want anyone else to read. Hell, encrypt everything, if you can get all your correspondents to use it, too. If you're worried about them reading your email, simply taking it off the server a few times a day isn't really going to help you--it wouldn't be difficult for them to keep permanent copies, or just pull the mail spool from a backup tape, if they really wanted email as evidence. So that's a silly reason to use POP over IMAP.

Personally, I use fetchmail to pull my mail off several mail servers and put it in a local (network-wise) IMAP store that works really fast within the network, while still being accessible (via TLS/SSL) outside. Since I use more than one computer regularly, IMAP is really convenient.

For the client, I usually use Mozilla Thunderbird. I like that it's cross-platform (and works equally well on Linux and Windows), and it has a great PGP plugin, Enigmail [mozdev.org], that supports both inline and PGP/MIME signing and encryption. I had used Evolution on Linux before, but it was a little too bloaty for my taste, and it doesn't support pgp-inline, which is all that at least half of the people I know can use.

Re:Wish AIM were next

[infiniti99]

And if many different companies ran IM servers that were all part of the same system, how long before SPIM became rampant?

With XMPP/Jabber, packets are not domain spoofable like in SMTP. This means that XMPP is already as effective on spam as a basic email challenge/response system like TMDA [tmda.net], but without any of the drawbacks since it is built-in.

And with clients like gaim and trillian, why does this matter to anyone except the competitors?

Since AOL's AIM network has no server-to-server bridge, the only way to talk to AIM users is to actually log in as a client to the AIM network, using an AIM account, which is ridiculous. Logging into multiple services from the same client does not change this. It gives a false sense of bridging between networks. In the meantime, you have to worry that these companies might try to break your IM client.

Also, I don't think "competitors" is the right term. Sure, there might be businesses that want to compete against AOL in the IM space, but I think the majority of those that would run IM servers are _users_. I run a personal Jabber server at andbit.net for about 10 people. Universities and businesses are gradually switching to XMPP/Jabber. We are all users of IM, and we simply want interconnectivity.