The troubles of AOL continue. In the fall of 2002, AOL had 26.7 million U.S. subscribers. It's now down to 18.6 million. That and a growing faith in the power of advertising apparently prompted AOL CEO Jonathan Miller to go before the Time Warner board and exclaim, "Tear down this wall!" Signs are they will drop subscription fees for broadband customers. AOL has gradually made more of its content and services available for free on its ad-supported Web sites, but some features, including e-mail with an aol.com address, remained available to paying subscribers only. The WSJ says nearly one-third of AOL's subscribers already have broadband and that AOL expects 8 million of its existing dial-up customers would switch over, at a cost of $2 billion in subscription fees. Cynthia Brumfield at IP Democracy says: "In what is probably a bit of corporate delusion, AOL is hoping to double its ad revenues to compensate for the loss of the premium subscription revenues. While ad revenues have been growing as AOL pushes more of its content and services to an open web-based model, ad growth won’t cover a fraction of this revenue loss!” Remember when AOL was the biggest ISP in the known universe?
Just how many drinks coasters can you possibly use?
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