I don’t mean to insult anyone, but recently I’ve been wondering how in the world AOL has stayed in business all these years. They started out providing a (moderately decent) dial-up service for people to connect to the internet back in the late 80s. Then, they got HUGE in the early 90s and arguably made their fortune with the words “You’ve Got Mail.” Nowadays, however, many people are ditching their dial-up for broadband. Good for us, bad for AOL because broadband is not available through AOL, it’s only available through a cable or phone provider (and possibly satellite?) AOL is loosing customers so it has to offer a new service.
What is this service exactly? I wanted to know, so I called AOL and inquired just how AOL for broadband works. What they said was this: I would basically keep my current cable or DSL provider and continue to pay them the normal connection fee of $xx.xx per month. Then, I would be charged an additional fee from AOL of $9.95 per month to use their services. The services include their “anti spam”, “anti spy-ware”, “anti virus” protection and an AOL email address. While I’m sure the services they offer are good, all that stuff is available elsewhere for free.
Why, after ditching dial-up and getting broadband, do people continue to fork their money over to AOL? Don’t they realize that once they have broadband they no longer have to pay AOL to connect to the internet? Maybe they want to keep their AOL email address, who knows. I suspect the main reason people stay with AOL is brand familiarity; the same reason people stay with Internet Explorer instead of switching over to a faster, safer and prettier browser: FireFox.
Let’s stop the insanity and start saving money. If you have broadband and are still paying AOL call them right now and cancel. Then, install this list of FREE programs on your PC that will offer you every bit of “protection” that you get with AOL:
- Surf the net with FireFox (note their awesome themes.)
- Protect yourself from spy-ware with Ad-Aware SE Personal.
- Double up on that spy-ware protection, use Spybot
Search & Destroy
too. - Scan your computer for viruses with AVG Personal Anti-virus.
- AOL’s E-mail doesn’t hold a candle to Yahoo! E-mail (note that it provides spam and virus protection for FREE.)
These programs are simply my personal favorites. There are many more free programs available for download at Download.com.
This was a public service announcement courtesy of Open Switch
P.S.-If this entry just convinced you to ditch AOL, feel free to donate the $119.40 you just saved over the next year to the Red Cross. Lord knows they need it.
