AOL to give free services by Sept.
updated 12:10 pm EDT, Wed August 2, 2006
AOL Free Services
AOL is clearly in the middle of a massive transition forced upon it by the explosion of Internet content that rendered its old business model obsolete. It lost almost a million users of its Internet provider service in Spring of this year, while at the same time its ad revenue spiked by a full 40%. It should be no surprise, then, that the company no longer sees the need to limit a lot of its services to paying subscribers. As of Wednesday, AOL.com e-mail addresses are already free, while a large number of its other services will be made free by September. Of particular interest is its planned Internet phone service: site users will be able to get a free local phone number with unlimited incoming calls.
