aol

You've Got Mail -- again. AOL is introducing a new email tool designed to make life easier for Internet users, even those running rival email services. About 20 million people still use AOL's email service. That user base is dwarfed by some rivals; ... for example, Google's Gmail boasts 425 million users. Nevertheless, AOL thinks it can improve everyone's email experience. That's why it's launching Alto, an email service that runs in a web browser and brings into a single location messages from AOL, Apple, Gmail, and Yahoo accounts. AOL plans to tweak the service later on so it can work with ... (view more)

Google's been the top search engine for a long, long time now and that means it rakes in the most cash when it comes to online advertising. Several years ago its main competition in this arena had been Microsoft, Yahoo and America Online (AOL), all ... of which had their own, relatively successful search engines to offer. But Yahoo and AOL have fallen on hard times of late, and in a bid to re-establish themselves both have turned to Microsoft for help. According to the Wall Street Journal (WSJ), all three companies are nearing a deal that would see advertising shared across their websites. For ... (view more)

Last week, AOL announced that it would acquire Bebo, the third most popular social-networking site in the United States. The deal is worth $850 million, a bargain when considering that many companies, such as News Corp., Facebook, and Google are ... looking to the medium as the next big thing for advertising dollars. (Source: nytimes.com ) While the nobility of Silicon Valley have high hopes, no one has really found the 'magic formula' to turn social networking into a cash cow. If any company has the ability to monetize connecting with friends it may be AOL and Bebo. AIM is the dominant Instant ... (view more)

Last week, Time Warner's new CEO Jeff Bewkes confirmed the corporation would separate AOL's Internet dial-up division from the company's advertising and content business. This leads analysts to believe that Time Warner may sell one or both of its ... AOL divisions.(Source: cnn.com ) "We're working on separating AOL's access and audience businesses so we can run them independently. This should significantly increase AOL's strategic options," Bewkes said during a conference call with investors. AOL's subscription business has been faltering since the Web 2.0 explosion, and rival firms ... (view more)

America Online (AOL) has broken its vows of proprietary ownership and will soon integrate open source Jabber protocols into its AIM and ICQ instant messaging services. AOL is currently in the process of testing a new version of AIM, using the Jabber ... platform as a way to make improvements to its service and eliminate potential operating bugs. While the modifications are still in the test phase, supporters of open source software are looking forward to the potential benefits Jabber can provide. (Source: betanews.com ) Although Jabber is relatively well known within technical circles, most ... (view more)