AOL, one of the Internet service providers that first brought the world wide web and instant messaging to the mass market, has been struggling with a decreasing subscriber base since 2000. Since then, when AOL reached a peak of over 30 million subscribers worldwide, the company has merged with media conglomerate, Time Warner (2001) and in the subsequent five years has seen its subscriber base dwindle down to under 25 million subscribers worldwide.
AOL recently announced that it will begin offering AOL software and email accounts for free, a dramatic change in business plan for one of the companies that revolutionized personal Internet use. In switching to an ad-supported content site, similar to that of Google and Yahoo, competition will not get any easier for AOL. With Time Warner as their parent company, however, media content to attract Internet traffic should not be a problem, but I’m not sure how many ad-supported content websites can succeed in a market that gets more crowded by the day.
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