AOL Mail on the Web

We chatted (by phone) with the largest ISP in the U.S. about the company's webmail product.

by Alex Goldman ISP-Planet Managing Editor [April 25, 2005]

"It's a wonderful time to talk about webmail and AOL," says Roy Ben-Yoseph, AOL's director of communication and client products. "We completed the rollout of our upgrade exactly one month ago."

The company sees webmail as an extra way to access the internet. "Much webmail use is at work. AOL members may use webmail at work, on vacation, or on someone else's computer," Ben-Yoseph notes.

The brand demands it be easy to use
The key is to make it easy to use and responsive. "It's not a heavy client," says Ben-Yoseph. "It uses paradigms of navigation that people are used to on the web. For example, people are used to clicking check boxes so that's how they select messages in AOL Mail on the Web."

The e-mail client is designed to feel familiar. "We allow people to do what they normally do with mail: read, write, and send," says Ben-Yoseph. "AOL on the Web has all the core features that people expect plus a great new spell check feature. That's something people were used to seeing in Word but not on the web. We also offer drag and drop from one folder to another."

AOL is also ready for those who like to customize their e-mail. "Our app can write rich text. The web has moved beyond plain text. We think it's important that you can express yourself with colors and underlines and all that great stuff."

Convenience is also key, and that make the address book very important. "We're very very good at the integration of e-mail and address book. The address book is often the central communication mechanism, so as you type in the address, we open a drop down menu of options from your contact list."

Features
Asked about storage limits, Ben-Yoseph says that AOL's goal is to provide what subscribers ask for (a line all CEOs should have in their pocket at every interview). He says the current quota is 100 MB per screen name, and that AOL gives out seven names for each subscriber. "Members of our service have not come to us and said they're running out of storage. We're constantly talking to members, making sure that we adapt to their needs. We're listening to members, not competitors."

Ben-Yoseph says that the webmail product also draws on the strengths of its AOL 9.0 product. However, readers on our ISP-Lists feel AOL subtracts value instead of adding it—see Beating the Branded ISPs. On the other hand, Jupiter Research analyst David Card points out that AOL has stopped serving pop up ads and has made many other improvements too.

One feature we never knew existed is the ability to unsend a message—if that message was sent from your AOL account to another AOL member. "We pull it off the server and delete it," explains Ben-Yoseph. "Of course, that doesn't work if it's already been read." If anyone is involved in redesigning e-mail (to fight spam) they might consider adding such an unsend option to the e-mail protocol.

AOL to the future
Asked about AOL Mail on the Web's future, Ben-Yoseph admits that he cannot talk about everything he's working on. "I am always talking to the folks that work for me, always asking them what we have to do. I know we can always be better. I will mention one new feature. We're always working to make things faster. The latest AOL Mail on the Web release increased speed, and that is something that I always want to improve."

The new release also incorporated features from an acquired company, the anti-spam operation Mailblocks, whose founder Phil Goldman died unexpectedly at the age of 39 on December 25, 2003. Goldman (not a relative) had controversially filed for a patent on challenge response technology. (He was better known as the founder of WebTV.)

Asked whether AOL plans to enforce the patent, AOL spokeswoman Jaymelina Esmele said, "I cannot comment on whether AOL will be enforcing or will not be enforcing the patent." So that question remains unanswered.

— End