AOL Privacy Leak

bLaugh explains it well with their latest comic. These comics just keep getting better and better. Unfortunately AOL’s image doesn’t. First the world finally realizes how difficult they make it to cancel an account, and now the released over 20 million search queries from 500,000 AOL users. Though the only people with something to fear are the ones with something to hide, like the person who searched on how to kill his wife (source).

AOL, Freebies And You

Jason Calacanis wrote up a post about AOL and I responded in the comments. He asked if AOL should provide free Internet services like Google and Yahoo. I say that it may already be too little and too late for AOL to make an impact with more free services. They kept up their walled garden for so long, that people became fed-up and left for more open pastures. I know I did years ago. AOL was the second ISP I ever used, right after Prodigy, and after a few years I started using NetZero more heavily and then switched to high-speed Internet. AOL just didn’t offer good speeds in my area and the quality of the bloated desktop client was poor.

Though free services could help keep AOL’s current customers using the service in some capacity while they jump ship, I would say its a necessary move from AOL that may not help. They took over the Netscape brand and pretty much abandoned the browser, which is now an important Microsoft competitor. They didn’t even put their weight behind the browser for their Internet service users. And their relationship with Google is sketchy at best. No one knows how they will leverage their business agreement with Google (where they received $1 billion for advertising and other goodies), especially given their botched merger and Netscape buy.

I think AOL should offer free services, but that they should have been doing it for years. Do you think there is any juice left at AOL? Is their recent interest in blogging enough to save them? And what do you think went wrong with the Time Warner merger and Netscape buyout?

Google Talk to Communicate with AIM Users

From the press release: “Under the strategic alliance, Google and AOL will continue providing search technology to AOL’s network of Internet properties worldwide. The agreement’s broad range of new features for users and advertisers include:

Enabling Google Talk and AIM instant messaging users to communicate with each other, provided certain conditions are met”

What those conditions are is unknown. Sounds very good. Maybe soon I will be able to use Google Talk only and kill off my AIM account.

Speculation over the AOL/Google Deal

Recently it has been reported that Google is going to pay AOL 1 billion dollars for a 5% stake in the company.

“The deal would help Google sell more of the display ads that run on some of the Web sites affiliated with Google. AOL’s big sales staff would begin selling such display ads for an unspecified number of Web publishers that have outsourced at least part of their ad sales to Google.

In turn, Google, whose technology powers the AOL search engine, would allow AOL to directly sell search ads, which appear when users type key words in queries or when the words appear in the texts of Web sites.”

Google also would promote AOL’s Web properties. What the article doesn’t mention much of what Google will be getting out of the deal. Sure it talks about ads, but there could be a bigger picture here.

Google has the toolbar, an investment in the Mozilla Firefox browser, and the Google Talk messaging service. Why would product tie-ins be out of the question? Also, lately I have been checking out AOL Beta Central and they have been working on some interesting projects to make it easy to fix or secure your computer. They have that new version of AIM which looks impressive and elegant, and they even have a Firefox Toolbar Beta.

AOL has become a powerhouse of synergy, making a business out of leveraging their properties. This is something Google can learn from.

AOL’s New Feed Reader

AOL is beta testing a new feed reader. You can check it out here. Some of their preset feeds are powered by Feedster, such as the News one and the Blogs one.

It’s a fairly uneventful test, that looks like it is trying to be Start.com. But without any extra bells and whistles it’s just another meaningless feed reader that offers no great features. Though they do let you copy your feeds to another computer with a special URL. And they now have the ability to let you search for a feed, but this again is powered by Feedster.

On a personal note, I created the logo for Feedster and never received a penny even after they started rolling in cash. Oh well. C’est la vie.

AOL Buys Weblogs Inc.

PaidContent’s Rafat Ali reports that America Online is buying Jason Calacanis’s Weblogs Inc. And now Om Malik is reporting it as well. Rafat also reported that Calacanis refused to comment on the story.

And in related news, I met both Rafat and Jason today at We Media.

AOL Pictures Beta 2 Goes Gold

I just noticed that the AOL Pictures beta has just gone GM, or Gold Master. This is the publicly released non-beta.

   What’s New:

• Navigation - New changes to “Create and “Share To”, now easier to navigate.
• Uploading Pictures - Upload Images in a Snap, with the new Upload tool! Drag and drop into the upload well, Start uploading faster.
• My Albums - Double Click to View Larger Images. Larger images viewed in single view mode.
• New Multi Picture Style Selection - Hold Shift or Ctrl to multi select images.
• Rubber Band Selection - You can now drag select (or rubber band) and Re-arrange pictures using drag and drop.
• New Visuals - New Welcome Screen, new AOL Pictures Toolbar Visuals.
• Did you know? - You can now rearrange pictures in your album, simply select a picture and drag it to a new location.
• AOL Print Store - AOL Print Store allows you to print your photos.