Wow, AOL is going to give away 5 gigs of storage space. That’s a lot of space.
To me, it seems like this is the first shot from AOL in this new Free But Not Really war they’re starting. It’s hard to tell where something like this will end up, because the ad market is crashing and AOL shouldn’t be basing a business purely on marketing. I think giving away the AOL client is a good idea, because it’s crap anyway and nothing will keep it from being crap.
But they can charge for good tools, as long as they’re GOOD TOOLS. If they aren’t and it’s just something they overload with advertising, then it’s just going to keep turning away users. If they’re going to give away this storage space for free, it scares me that it’ll be crap, and crap isn’t what AOL needs. AOL needs good tools.
