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?