Wait - A Closed Environment Isn't the Be All End All?

Wait - A Closed Environment Isn't the Be All End All?

Today's announcement that AOL will be improving its web-based email access for members and opening a free version of the service for non-members in 2005 is a quiet cry of "uncle."  What's amazing isn't the announcement so much as how long it took for AOL to get there. 

What will this do to the email landscape?  Not much, in my view.  It's too little, too late, to mean much of anything.