New AOL Email Beta Cannot Compete With Google, Yahoo

This might appeal to the less tech savvy user but as you mentioned it wont appeal to any readers of this blog

Mike,
Do you sleep at all….Now at 2:50am ? unless you are on road….

Or do you time articles in advance

AOL is at least trying after years of absolutely awful efforts…but they’re so late to the game in this that they really needed to do something to wow people like 10 gigs free email storage or maybe 20.

instead new users will keep flocking to Gmail and Yahoo Mail, and rightly so.

gmail doesn’t have drag/drop like the other futuristic webmail apps do. what keeps me coming back is the labels/conversations/search capabilities. they all make organization so much simpler.

Quote: I wonder why the team that built this didn’t try to create something a little more special than this.

I don’t think this is strange. They just had to launch damn fast to fix the monstrous product they had before.

I believe they have IMAP free

Interesting review Mike and I would have to disagree with your analysis. I am not at all a fan of Google’s Gmail. I had my account hacked and data lost and had no one to turn to for help at Google as they offer little to no support to these types of issues. I also find the way Google does not offer folders to organize your mail to be a bit of a pain. I think the new AOL Mail Beta is pretty slick and would opt to use it over Yahoo Mail Beta. I think it responds more quickly to common functions than Yahoo Mail Beta. Additionally, AOL is offering users the ability to create their own email address domain making it easy for mainstream users to get a personalized email account. Of the email products mentioned who else is doing that?

RSS is on the way. I’ve been in contact with one of the devs and they know it is important … this is still a very early beta …geez, give them a little bit of a break.

As for the storage space, Who really cares if Gmail gives you 2.6GB? …whoopie! What’s next? Live Mail gives you 2.9GB? 99% of email users never even approach the 2GB mark anyways.

Its a shame that Mike is a little biased to Google and the other free mail services, as it is evident that he did not do a very thorough investigation of the feature sets offered by AOL mail.

One simply incorrect statement in the posting is that AOL does not allow “POP/IMAP of email in or out of the service.” This is flat wrong. AOL has provided (the arguably more advanced) IMAP protocol for at least 5 years for free (unlike some of AOL’s competitors).

Other statements are a bit of a stretch as well in terms of a real comparison. E.g. Mike blasts AOL because it has only 2GB of storage which is so much “less” than Google’s 2.6GB. Like we all know that no more than 0.5% of the universe even has that much mail in their mailbox (trust me, I know). I don’t think this is much of a deal breaker for not using an AOL mailbox.

I will admit that AOL has bungled a lot over the years and the company has a bad rap in techie circles. But I am not sure this should excuse Mike and others from using facts in articles like this.

Mike - please check your facts when you compare services. It is a disservice to your readers when you don’t, on an otherwise very informative site.

AOL sucks, my father-in-law still thinks that aol is the “internet” and the only way that one can connect to it.

They didn’t build a better mail product because they had no incentive to do so. Why work any harder than you have to when you don’t have any equity? This is why we don’t see any innovation happening at large companies. In my opinion fortune 500, 1000 companies provide little more than decent paying dead end jobs for those who do not want to innovate and spend most their lives having meetings about meetings.

Frank: and at what point do you disclose that you work for AOL?

Labels are much better than folders, AOL is playing catch-up and they aren’t very good at it

Gmail has a service outage almost everyday, just not for everyone at once. I don’t think anyone here can claim they haven’t seen the “Gmail is temporarily unavailable” error message at least once.

AOL is so dumb …. one example.They try to sell their broadband on top of existing cable broadband - you pay comcast and also AOL .

I agree with Carl. You got your facts a little wrong Mike.
AOL does provide IMAP (I get my daily TechCrunch emails on AOL IMAP-Apple Mail).
AOL is far better SPAM control. My Gmail and Yahoo mail boxes are flooded with SPAM whereas AOL is not even 1-2 SPAM mails a day!!!. I haven’t tried the AOL product yet but Yahoo and Gmail has serious shortcomings. Yahoo interface is full of adds (unless somebody is paying dollars for their POP service). If you have more than couple of hundred of emails in inbox folder, Yahoo’s AJAX interface sucks. It is too slow. Gmail does not have a drag and drop functionality and people who love folders are still still not comfortable with Labels. Other features which AOL has and are not provided by rivals:
1. Integration to calendar from within the e-mail interface, a feature launched by yahoo much later than AOL.
2. Direct blogging (only AOL journal) facility from any e-mail you are reading. This does not make them great but well in competition with others.
3. Any email can be added to Task or Calendar directly as an event or task.
4. You can add more than one screen name in a single user login and you can swap back and forth seamlessly.
5.My personal favorite is to be able to hide the side bar for a bigger and much better interface to read e-mails.

AOL is not that far behind others. Like other techies, you are totally biased against AOL.

AOL mail and AIM mail have supported IMAP/SMTP mail clients for a few years. With Plaxo sync of address books, Outlook and AOL address books stay in sync so that webmail and Outlook address books are in sync and with IMAP/SMTP, the mail also stays synced.

Thomas,
I figured people already knew that I work for AOL, so I didn’t find it necessary to add a disclosure. I am pretty transparent about what I do and regularly review products (more than just AOL products) on my blog, Somewhat Frank. But since you asked, here you go:

Disclosure: I work for AOL, not on the AOL Mail product but I am the product manager for two other AOL products.

AOL timewarner was terrible idea.

Now, People have problem with AOL email beta. They spying emails. They calm “No no no no. We follow privacy policy. ” Yeah right!!!! Cause you graduate MBA degree and still can’t read their own company’s policy.

They will read very personal emails. I’m switching Gmail and Yahoo.

Better luck next time AOL!!!

AOL should be appoarching CNET, Business News, and other publishers. But… Why is AOL beta mail stuff doing on Techcrunch news since AOL isn’t startup company?

Gmail has been down since last night (I noticed it around 9pm est). As of 10:10 am the following morning it is still down. This is the error I get:

[quote]arse error. unterminated string literal at ./cs/caribouroot/java/com/google/caribou/ui/fin/jsdata/prefetch.js line 196:
” PF_cache_[PF_prefetchUrl_]);Parse error. missing ) after argument list at ./cs/caribouroot/java/com/google/caribou/ui/fin/jsdata/prefetch.js line 197:
} catch(e) {Parse error. ‘try’ without ‘catch’ or ‘finally’ at ./cs/caribouroot/java/com/google/caribou/ui/fin/jsdata/prefetch.js line 217:
TL_UpdateLabelCounts(threadid);[quote]

I don’t use AOL email but I’m sure it doesn’t go down as often as Gmail does.

Alan. heheheh

Lol…. How many graduates actually work the largest corporation and use BETA or ALPHA labels on the web?

Their goal is trick people’s heads.

mike…

your comments aren’t necessarily true…. AOL could have simply amassed enough information on their users to determine that the functionality that they’re offering/will offer is what the majority of users use…

microsoft excel has had serious functionality over the years, that the vast majority of users never use…

every hosted email provider doesn’t have to provide/offer the same technology for their user base. and simply because you (or your readers) may not use it isn’t in and of itself an indication that the offering won’t find great acceptance and usage among the targeted userbase.

people who drive high end mercedes benz vehicles probably wouldn’t be caught driving in low end/middle of the road toyotas.. but i’d be happy to have the market share that toyota has if we’re talking about pure users…

the readers, and this site are decidedly biased for more techy things/functionality!!

peace…

@Frank, I didn’t know you worked for AOL, but your original post makes more sense now, thanks.

@Pankaj, You should probably admit that you work for AOL as well because only an AOL employee would have to deal with customers that need folders.

I met a few AOL folk (Dulles and Phoenix) recently while on vaca in MX. They seemed smart and liked to party, but were certainly of the 9-5 mentality. Not the type you find sleeping under their desk.

AOL is for people like my mother and corporate slug’s father-in-law, which is no small market. The boomers are probably the largest population segment in the US today. The question is how many actively use the internet daily. This segment does not want the most innovative web features.

@why?, Would you like English lessons?

bdb telling it like it is. Amen.

I switched to GMail and sticking with it. Free POP and IMAP. Labels are better than folders. It’s like placing an email in one or more folders. The search is better. Integration with Google Apps and the Calendar. Forwarding, receiving, answering emails with other email addresses. What more can I ask for?

My son recently showed me how to sync my Google Calendar to my iPod. Yahoo and AOL can’t do that.

Mike you may want to correct this “But drag and drop webmail applications have been around for years, now it is a far cry from being even remotely cutting edge compared to Gmail and Yahoo’s competing offerings. ”
Yahoo Mail just got drag and drop in the new beta.
Hotmail got drag and drop with new live offereing.
GMail does not have drag and drop support

There are lot of things missing in Gmail

Gmail does not have any drag and drop support.
Gmail does not have hierarchial folders
Gmail does not support Outbox
Gmail does not tag clusters
No S/MIME support

Storage is not a feature of e-mail application, It is feature of the e-mail service.

The point of upgrading/building a service for AOL like this isn’t likely to be for the purpose of recruiting new members and users, but to make sure current users don’t see a great gap between the features they are using and what is available elsewhere.

For example, the implementation of RSS is basically unimportant to most users. No one cancelled their AOL mail account today and went to Yahoo! just b/c AOL doesn’t have RSS. If they implement these kinds of things over the next few months (or even years), the goal or retaining current users will likely be achieved.

Who uses AOL these days? computer ilit users? i like gmail over any other webmail cause its light and fast

You should review the new infinite storage Rediffmail. Though the number of ads are very high and the usability poor, it is still better than the new AOL Mail.

I’d love to see what Mike has to say about this half-assed write up.

The problem is, there isn’t really any innovation. So what, how many people care about the extra storage (2-5%)? Why should I switch when I won’t even use 20MB of that storage? Let’s see some REAL innovation. E-mail seems to be the only service stuck in the pre “2.0″ era.

@bdb - You got it slightly wrong. I work for Yahoo and they also have to deal with customers with a crush on folder type organizing of their e-mails. So far people are happy with this. I wish we could add labels too.
Sleeping under the desk does not produce anything. I am sure somebody at AOL or Yahoo or Google did enough at some point that we have such a vast and mature internet today.
Yahoo is the biggest today, not because they revolutionized e-mailing (they had same old interface for years) but because there was nobody good enough.
Gmail became a hit because they provided huge storage space and obviously then people started liking their labels and all.

@xxdesmus: You are right.
Mike, you certainly do not want people to blindly believe you.
Its clear that there are some things that are not true about the analysis.
So please step in to cool it a little bit

@Ed: Google has free POP/SMTP not IMAP/SMTP. Click above for the answer in the GMail FAQ.

Did u ever see rediff.com …. Its supposed to provide unlimited webspace. And I feel it has the fastest and best web interface. Though the colours are not of my choice.

I disagree Mike. I briefly tested out the new AOL mail yesterday, and while nothing could move me away from Gmail, I do think the new AOL email is a step in the right direction. If they could clean up their visual design and make it a bit more appealing, while fixing some of the smaller IA issues. I’d rather use the new AOL email then Yahoo mail. I really like their interactions for reading a new email.

It kills me that Yahoo only allows you to look at mail in their default 3 pane view. I know you can kill the preview, but to me, Yahoo Mail would be so much more usable for those of us with large monitors if they just went to a 3 column layout similar to the new Live Mail. If they did that, I think I might actually consider a switch from Gmail.

@Ed Folders will always be better than labels and GMail’s system is by far the most unreliable. They are the potatoes without the meat.

I personally have used yahoo mail for years now, but only because it was free. Even with their anti-spam features I still get tons of spam. Their system seems to have slowed down allot lately too. No matter what location i’m connecting from (home work), i’m waiting 8-12 seconds per screen on most days.

Now that AOL is making all of their services free and catching up in the features area, I may have to try them out. I sure wouldn’t mind having my own domain for my email addy. They definitley have the most comprehensive user environment/culture overall. I tried for years to pull people away from them, because you don’t “need” AOL for most of the stuff they offer. I later realized after many conversations that the community itself and their development of it are what makes it special.

Two quick things - I could not find any support for imap in or out, so please point me to it and I’ll update. drag and drop has been around since oddpost, long long time ago.

i love the comment that says i am biased towards google.

Granted, I only have four emails in my AOL inbox but the little mouse over delete function is really smooth. Other people should take that idea and run with it… like for spam reporting.

The four emails in my inbox a testament to how effective the spam filtering is — or my distinct lack of popularity.

i think aol is past its prime - it’s best days were in the past

There is no setting inside the mail interface but here are some pointers to set it up.
http://about.aol.com/faq/openmailaccess

Mike,

http://www.postmaster.aol.com/imap/outlook00.html

Charlie

what a boring conversation, this whole launch is a non-event and most of what is being said here is just innacurate (this whole drag+drop thing, and no other mail app supporting calendars - what are these guys smoking)

AOL need a major strategy shift, you can’t put them in the same camp as Goog, Y! and MSFT - those guys are each putting out their own innovative products, what we have here is an old company with new colors trying to play catchup

For most of us, AOL will always be the drunk embarresing uncle of the web world

bdb

As matter fact, I do…. AOL have bunch of MBA jerks who don’t know how to read and write AOL’s privacy policy. All they do is invade and read people’s privacy email. [period]

I read articles about AOL privacy scandals. Explain to people… Why do you want to read People’s credit card and social security number?

What is your excuse?

P.S. AOL is for losers!!!

Let’s try to keep this thread’s quality high and product focused rather than company-bashing.

Wow, did you even try searching? A quick google for “AOL IMAP” brings up a bunch of sites but the official appears to be here:

http://about.aol.com/faq/openmailaccess

It’s not new to this release, it’s been there for years.

And yes, I work for AOL but that really has nothing to do with searching for the info on IMAP access.

IMAP - I couldn’t find it anywhere in the product itself, under settings or otherwise.

This is not a good product. Like everything else AOL has released recently, its a poor me-too. If you want the respect of bloggers, attacking in comments isn’t the way to go. Building great products is.

Anyway, I’ve updated the post. In my opinion, adding these instructions to the product itself would be helpful.

These AOL guys certainly are touchy. Maybe you guys should take criticisms here as constructive and use them to improve your product instead of bashing the messenger. If someone can’t find a feature maybe there’s an issue with the product design. I’m pretty sure no one here would use an AOL product anyway - this isn’t exactly the internet-on-training-wheels crowd that AOL spent so long marketing themselves to be.

Who on earth said that gmail had imap?

All I know is that no one has yet to come up with a good a combo as outlook/exchange for online/offline email and PIM. Sad but true.

I work for AOL (not the mail product).

A few things. I think folks that are hutring on AOL are thinking about AOL in the old dial-up-client-pay-to-access kind of way. AOL isn’t that company anymore, learning and change are hard and sure, and there are stragglers within the company that are resisting, but by-and-large it’s just not the way AOL thinks anymore. And since it’s only been a handful of months since this sea change it’ll take some time to see the effects of that on the Web. One of the negative effects this change has had at AOL is particularly evident in the Mail product. It’s relying on legacy platform which has a huge impact on performance and other nuances that will continue to make AOL Webmail not quite as competitive as it can be. But don’t think for a minute that AOL doesn’t know this or isn’t working on it… and please don’t make the assumption that a company with over 8 billion in revenue can’t hire smart people that look at gmail and yahoo mail and don’t see what’s happening there. I like folders, lots of folks do, if you take them away I’ll be pissed. So give me a choice, Gmail or AOL Mail and I’ll take AOL Mail because it’s got stuff that I want. Cool doesn’t get my work done any better or faster. And of course we all know that AOL has free IMAP support.

I think what I’m saying is that just because AOL was slow to embrace the Web doesn’t mean you should discount what AOL has to offer just because of perceived truths. I bet a lot of folks would be surprised at what they find on AOL today and even more surprised on what they’ll find at AOL tomorrow.

Forget it. AOL without — steve case….

It’s total garage company. Steve case ran away with million dollars. There is no product to compete with.

AOL versus Yahoo…. Boring…
AOL versus MSN….. Boring…
AOL versus Google…. Boring…

AOL need is sell their rights to Google, Yahoo, MSN. That would be lovely.

Upfront disclaimer — I work for AOL and lead the Mail Product Management & Business teams.

I wanted to jump in here and try to help set the record straight. Some of what I’ll say below has already been noted by others but I thought I’d try to summarize it all in one post.

I have a lot of respect for Yahoo and Gmail and those products are good in their own ways, but not all three target the same market space. Hence why there are differing priorities on various feature sets.

Here are some of the items noted in the original :

POP/IMAP: “[does not allow] POP/IMAP of email in or out of the service.”
- Actually, AOL was the first provider to support free open IMAP access since 2004 — at no extra charge. AOL’s uses IMAP because of the additional features it provides, including host based foldering. Any mainstream mail client can be configured for IMAP, so the use of that protocol is not a barrier. Currently Gmail offers only POP, and Yahoo offers POP as part of their premium product for a fee. Instructions on how to setup IMAP are here:
http://help.aol.com/AIMhelp/se.....extType=gs

Storage: “AOL does offer 2 GB of free storage, more than Yahoo and equal to Live Hotmail, but less than Gmail’s current 2.6 GB.”
- Actually AOL offers a competitive 2GB free storage in the main Inbox. AOL also provides the industry’s largest Unlimited storage in the Saved on AOL folder. Messages moved to the Saved folder will be kept forever without a quota limitation. And since this is a techie crowd here, I’ll get technical for a second and say that Gmail doesn’t offer 2.6GB, they provide 2.8GB of space.

RSS: “does not integrate RSS feeds”
- We’re working on it. Remember, this is the initial release of a beta product, so expect more features to get added as updates are released. Details like that are on the beta site.

IM Integration: “[does not integrate with] IM”
- Actually, AOL Mail, including webmail has had IM integration for several years, including the ability to see presence in email and address book (Yahoo Mail Beta has no presence indicator). Additionally, users can IM directly from mail, using either AIM or AIM Express. Up until the very recent Yahoo integrated IM release, this integration was on par. An upcoming Beta update will have even more IM integration features so stay tuned.

Email: “AOL does not support email tagging”
- No AOL doesn’t and that’s because this hasn’t been a big feature-request from our target market, outside of the techie crowd.

Message Forwarding: “does not allow for message forwarding”
- In the plans — again, we’re in beta with multiple updates coming. Gmail offers this for free and Yahoo charges extra for it (I think it’s ~$30/yr).

Search: “Search is so/so” (assuming reference is to Mail search)
- Additional improvements are planned including more performance improvements. There already is support for search by subject, sender, or body. More advanced search capabilities (that’ll negate other service’s lead) are also in the works.

Performance (Speed/Reliability): “speed and reliability were very poor in my testing, with a service collapse at one point.”
- Our major focus is on performance and reliability (login even states that we’re continually working on performance). When’s the last time you heard of a service interruption with Gmail? With Yahoo? And what about with AOL? It happens to the best of us, but frankly, I can’t recall the last time AOL had a large-scale interruption.

Having stated all of the above, is Cayman (AOL’s code name for webmail beta) perfect? No. Are we actively working on releasing new improvements/features soon? Absolutely. Will it be better than today’s version. Absolutely. Will it be better than Yahoo’s or Gmail’s? Yes, in a lot of ways, but we’ll all have to wait to see exactly how. We are committed to not only improving the product, but improving the mail experience overall.

I actually very much welcome Mike to give me a call (he’s got our number ;-)), and I’d be happy to walk through some of the product features, thinking behind them, and even where we’re heading.

Roy.

I’m not sure what caused this debauchery of AOL’s product. I’m amazed at the complaints and remarks you’ve made about this product, when it’s only in BETA.

Did you applied for a job with AOL and got turned down?

Maybe you should moderate your sugar and coffee consumption, and present a little more substance in the article, instead of simply going on a rant.

Oh, and for the record, I don’t work for AOL.

Mike,
Like Roy said you have their number, and Roy is probably the best person that you could talk to about the product. The reason why many AOL employees are bothered by the statements made are because (as you can tell from the postings) we do respect you and part of that respect is the belief that you would have known where to look up the IMAP information before saying that we don’t have it.

True AOL has been behind on some things before, however our market audience is different than Google or Yahoo! We’re also changing these things with things like the AOL Greenhouse (greenhouse.aol.com), and our Development Network (dev.aol.com). Like Carl said, we’ve had a good share of corporate mistakes, and many of those were even internal *slap forehead with palm of hand* moves for us internals as well, however there are many of us internally that are focusing on trying to bring those from the “old school” AOL to where we want AOL to be. It takes time.

Speak up, we’re listening

Disclosure: I work for AOL, not as a product manager or on the Mail team, however in QA

i like the new interface BUT, with the old AIM Mail, i could “Show Message Status” on an email I sent to an AOL or AIM Mail user. Now that option does not appear in the Action menu as it did.

I read somewhere on their blog that the Show Message Status will be added back soon. I too use that feature all the time. For now I have to use their old UI until they’re at feature parity again.

Tom

Amendment to my last comment…..

I use their old UI only when I want to use that one feature. I still prefer their new UI for 95% of the time.

Tom

The thoughtful posts from the AOL’ers have me thinking of the company in a different light.

Seems like the critics just get more desperate - it shows in the shallow, thoughtless post by MA and the defensive quips from his lackies. Ragging on the underdog is always easy. Mike, how about a direct reply to Roy’s post instead of a simple admission that you “can’t find” the IMAP settings?

Everyone has their day I suppose the TC will have theirs. Can’t wait til the next generation pokes fun at the “Web 2.0″ and TechCrunch old timers! We’ll see who’s on the defensive then!

AOL has *millions* of dedicated, happy customers AND teams of passionate employees. As Apple proved, combining the two creates all kinds of surprises. Just give it time (and a fair chance).

I work for AOL and use what I consider to be best of breed products from AOL, Yahoo and Google. All three companies have good products and bad products.

Two of my favorite AOL products are AIM and AIM Phoneline. I can’t think of a comparable free product to AIM Phoneline from Google or Yahoo. (I use it to keep the telemarketers at bay and it works wonderfully; I haven’t had to deal with a telemarketer in a long time.)

For personal mail I use Gmail, primarily because I like the quality of their mobile app and speed of search. But there are features in AIM/AOL mail that I would love to have in Gmail.

Sure, there are some mediocre products. But when you have hundreds of products, that’s bound to happen.

Another thing to keep in mind is that for a company on the scale of AOL (or Yahoo or Google), getting 100k or 500k real users for a product isn’t a success. At my last startup, I would have been thrilled with 50k. We have to design products that appeal to mass audiences and are intuitive for the vast majority of users.

One of the first things I learned as a product manager is that if I design products for me, they will fail. If you read my blog, you’ll see that I’m big a geek (or more) as anyone here.

But I’ve sat through dozens of focus groups and usability testing sessions where people have no idea what RSS is.

A criticism of a (non-AOL) product on another thread was “Ahhh…but there doesn’t seem to be a way to import an OPML file.”

I would love to be able to import and export OMPL files … but that feature will appeal to .0000001% of the audience.

Outside the Echo Chamber - Your comment says that I’m (a blogger) picking on the underdog (AOL). Are you nuts?

And I did respond to the IMAP comment, and made a correction in the post, and spoke to someone at AOL and suggested they put the instructions in the settings area of the email app like all others do.

I’m not sure what else I can do. I write my honest opinions and in my opinion AOL webmail is an inferior application. The fact that AOL has sponsored one of my events in the past, and that I have friends there, and that I am producing a conference with Jason Calacanis who used to be an exec there, would suggest any bias would swing the other way.

Your ridiculous, sad, uninformed and idiotic comment is a sham. I doubt you’ve even bothered to look at the application yourself. Write your real name and fight like a man.

AOL’s main market must be middle America (both in the US and throughout the world). That’s the larger slice of the pie and has much bigger potential than niche markets. That’s probably why they make products that appeal to the masses than us techies. That’s not a bad business plan by any means. Whether we like AOL or not, we gotta respect what they are trying to do.

I think the new AOL has a better than fair chance of kicking some series butt, not necessarily in being bleeding edge, but in having a HUGE market share that’s growing, since they’re well positioned! Most companies would kill, and I mean kill, to be in their shoes.

I’m rooting for the underdog, because the others are resting on their laurels (sp?).

Just my marketing perspective.

Tom

“Your ridiculous, sad, uninformed and idiotic comment is a sham. I doubt you’ve even bothered to look at the application yourself. Write your real name and fight like a man.”

What a circus this has become. Someone’s real colors, embarrassingly, are showing. Shame, shame, shame.

Come on people, we’re all better than this. If u must criticize, then critique the product, not people or companies. I expect more from the techcrunch folks.

Jake

It will be interesting to see what you think when it goes GM. I doubt you have the guts to revisit it again. Jerry

Packaj is right. AOL beats all the email clients in spam control. I can get up to 50 spam emails on gmail after 2 days of signing up. I hardly get any spam on AOL. Don’t forget AOL owns xdrive.com that gives members 10GB of free storage and AOL Pictures with unlimited photo storage.

I understand that webmail services are compared to Yahoo and Google because of their size, but frankly there are way better webmail services available if you look.

I would like to see some good coverage of those services. You can start with Goowy first, an ecxellent email service and more that is not near annoying in the advertising department as both Google and Yahoo are.

Michael,

Your post has certainly triggered vigorous discussion. We can debate the individual good and bad points of the App. Most of what you covered I actually agree with.

I wanted to put a different slant on the debate. I have had unique insight because for the past 6 months I have been publishing the 2.Open.aol.com internal blog. This is a site setup specifically to challenge, inform and educate on Web 2.0 issues.

What I have seen in that time is a sea-change in the mindset at AOL. There is a rapidly growing body of AOLers that are fully on board with Web 2.0 in both concept AND practice.

AOL Webmail is in beta and I am convinced that the passion is there to continue to enhance Webmail and other core products to be competitive with the best in the industry. There is vigorous open debate and critical assessment going on internally and as you see from this thread there is no complacency.

Of course, AIM Mail Beta *can* compete with Yahoo! Not with Google, but that’s simply because they have a different e-mailing model.

Whereas Yahoo! Mail Beta is technically cool, has tabs and whatever, AIM Mail is usable. They have a *very* simple interface, which is really awesome.

I still prefer Gmail, because I like the concept more. But compared to Yahoo! Mail Beta, AIM Mail Beta is WAYS better.

Gmail sucks…whats with the stupid labels…it makes no sense keep everything in one box and sort it by labels. If gmail could move the emails to a folder based on labels that would be much better. But untill gmail gets out of “BETA” ill stick to mail.app. As for aol webmail …its still better than gmail

I can never retrieve any recent mail off of my Aol account. WHy pay 24.95 a month for a service that simply doesn’t deliver?