E-mail and AOL software simultaneously ... free

In a strategic move to revive the mainstream Internet business, AOL has announced it will "give away" email accounts and a range of software that you could only get if you spent $ 26 / month.

AOL hopes they will make up for this money from online advertising revenue. This belief is further strengthened, as its advertising revenue soared to 40% in the second quarter.

AOL understands that it is only free of its services that it can prevent users from jumping to Yahoo, Google and Microsoft, which have been providing free email services for years.

Source: AP Analyst Rob Enderle said that this drastic reform will help AOL stay with the game. " If they sit still and do nothing, by the end of the decade, they will be wiped out ."

The move also put an end to an era at AOL - the company has achieved rapid growth in the 1990s. Thanks to AOL's service, millions of Americans have known email for the first time. Web and IM chat, simple, easy and convenient.

The golden age is over

AOL is the undisputed King of the Internet connection dialing on the heyday of this online method. Greeting every time a user logs in to the service - " You have a letter! " - has become a symbol of American culture and even became the title of a famous film by actor Tom Hanks.

AOL's stock was always at a high level during the "dot-com bubble", and then the affair with media giant Time Warner took place in 2000.

But how much promise and prospects from this "love story" quickly dissipated with soap bubbles. Stocks fell dramatically, AOL key officials in turn left because of shareholder pressure. Subscribers also leave gradually to switch to higher speed services such as broadband or cable.

" This is the goodbye that AOL has for the royal days. Now they know they are underdogs," said Jeff Lanctot, general manager of aQuantive Inc. " So don't expect that with this plan, AOL's revenue will skyrocket ."

Calculation of the underdog

For their part, AOL understood the reason why customers dropped them away. " They give up because the fee is too high. They go away because they don't feel satisfied. Now they can stay with us to enjoy free services ."

In addition to email services, AOL also decided not to offer much "proprietary" software that was previously available only to high-end subscription packages. Many new security and control features are also "promoted" for parents.

Most features will be free after the announcement, except for services targeted to teenagers, children and parents to postpone until early September.

Subscribers who have abandoned AOL for the past two years (about 6 million households) will be able to restore old mail addresses with one simple operation: login with the old password.

AOL is "sniffing" the smell of profits from new features like online video. Last Friday, the company reformed its video portal, allowing visitors to watch free and paid clips from across the Internet, including from rival sites like YouTube.

AOL hopes that by building user-friendly services, the online video market will be truly ascending.

Thien Y