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?