America Online announced this week that it planned to introduce free e-mail service on its AOL Instant Messenger platform. The e-mail service will have 2 gigabytes of storage and a number of other attractive features. It is a great idea ... if AOL had launched the product about two years ago. Now it is entering a pretty crowded space, with many users already locked into their Yahoo, Google or Hotmail accounts. AOL probably hesitated because of the fear of cannibalizing its core business. That's a fair enough fear, but now AOL has to contend with relatively entrenched competitors. It is a classic dilemma. It will be interesting to see if AOL's new free service proves attractive enough to woo users from other services.
Friday, May 13th, 2005