AOL relaunches free content/portal
Google changed everything with its free services that make money via advertising rather than subscriptions, and so AOL is making one more effort to compete in the new online reality. According to this WSJ story (subscription required):
Hoping for a bigger piece of the fast-growing online advertising pie, AOL later this month will unveil a revamped AOL.com Web site, offering free access to many of the features once available only to AOL's paying subscribers -- such as news, Internet radio, videos of music concerts and articles from magazines published by AOL's sister publications at Time Inc.
...AOL's goal is to bring its advertising sales in line with the industry so it can take advantage of rapid growth in online ad dollars. Nearly as many people visit AOL and its affiliated Web sites -- like Mapquest and Netscape -- as Yahoo and its affiliated sites, 110 million in April, versus 116 million. But last year, all of AOL sites had only $1 billion in ad sales while most of Yahoo's $3.6 billion in revenue came from advertising. Google's ad revenue was $3.2 billion.