Darken's replied to your comment; will you be rebuttaling?

Guy seems confused about all sorts of things. He wrote:

I see, AOL is some magic entity immune from hackers and ponzi scheme spam. Its called a spam filter. Its free. And what a laborious process clicking delete when one somehow gets through once a month. And I'm going to make a wild prediction and say that Google will be around for a bit longer than the hemorrhaging hemophiliac that is AOL.

I wrote:

Spam filter? Huh? Perhaps you meant to reply to somebody else's comment or perhaps you're clueless about the people who've gotten their gmail addresses hacked (probably by having "sharing" turned on on their computers in Starbucks and on other tenement-style Wifi). The person who hacks your gmail address gets control of it and changes your secret codes, etc., and replies to the friends responding to you as if they're you. Wouldn't fool me (also the friend whose email address was hacked would pull out his own teeth with a pliers and sell the gold in them before he'd ask people for money). Those who get their email hacked who happen to pay for their email can pick up the phone and have somebody solve their problem. Did you not read Manjoo's article? On freemail, there's none of that. Obviously. And how many times have you had to change your email address when Comcast or ATT or whomever became some other company? If AOL goes, I'll be moving on. I do have a gmail address and a .mac address. But, thanks ever so much for caring.

Everybody loves to bash AOL. It's remained afloat for 20 years, which is more than I can say for a whole lot of cable companies. I've been with my boyfriend for eight years, and in that time, he's had to change his email address about five times, when this cable company became that cable company...Comcast, Time-Warner, ATT, etc. If you emailed me in 1995 at a certain email address, you can still find me at that email address, which is how Mark Ebner was able to instant-message me around 6 a.m. on 9/11/2001 to tell me to turn on the TV right away.

I've been with my boyfriend for eight years, and in that time, he's had to change his email address about five times,

He should just by his own domain name for $10/yr and then point it at whatever provider he is currently using.

I'm often amused at the people who complain about issues with Yahoo, Gmail, Facebook, Reddit, web hosting, forums, and the dozens of other free web services. Just like broadcast TV, it's *free*, so you have to expect some issues.

I keep telling my friends that when you start paying a subscription fee, then y'all have a right to complain. But until then, stop complaining about Facebook (or whatever).

Personally, I'm a Google fanboi, so I would be more than willing to pay $50 to $100 a year to make sure I get an answer and some immediate (or at least reasonably quick) problem resolution.

That's not even the worst:

U.S. enables Chinese hacking of Google

http://articles.cnn.com/2010-01-23/opinion/schneier.google.hacking_1_chinese-hackers-access-system-google?_s=PM:OPINION

In order to comply with government search warrants on user data, Google created a backdoor access system into Gmail accounts. This feature is what the Chinese hackers exploited to gain access.

I happen to like Gmail, although I don't completely trust Google. For starters, they are a bunch of fuzzy-headed liberal anti-gun bigots. However, the Gmail service is very useful, primarily as an aggregator for my 100+ email accounts that I can access anywhere I can get to a browser. It's true that there is nothing even resembling customer support, so I back up EVERYTHING in my Gmail account periodically using Thunderbird. If Gmail manages to screw up badly enough, I can redirect everything to one of my other accounts, which would take me a couple of hours.

The lack of customer support is what keeps me from using Google Voice. I pay about $20/month for VoIP service in order to get support. While losing my email aggregator would be inconvenient (I can get my email through my own domains), losing my phone service (again -- I once made the mistake of relying on Google Voice) is not something I will tolerate. $20/month is cheap insurance.

To be fair, in the distant past AOL did in fact do a lot of things that deserved bashing. I won't bore everyone with the details, most of which are rather inside-baseball to Internet veterans. But the significant one was their role in trying to build an old-media concept of the Internet, where there would be a handful of content providers and everyone else would be passive consumers. Plus, AOL went through a period during the Time-Warner years where the quality of the service was poor, even though the price was high by comparison to other ISPs of the time.

There was one other bit that was not entirely AOL's fault. When the service first tied itself into the Internet in the mid-'90s, they flooded Usenet with a hoarde of Internet newbies who didn't know, or much care, about the conventions that made Usenet work (that is, to the extent that Usenet ever worked). An email address ending with "aol.com" became synonymous with "tyro". This was mostly not AOL's fault, but it nonetheless gave the service a bad rep among Internet veterans.

This was all years ago, though. AOL does seem to have found its purpose, after all of the uproar of the Time-Warner years.

I've had an account with a regional ISP for nearly 20 years now, and one of the reasons I maintain it is so that I can keep my email address. It's short and easily remembered by my friends and associates who live in my area.

The funny thing is that an aol address have become kind of cool, because it's so totally anti-cool.

Also Cousin Dave is right. AOL did much to warrant their poor rep. They have a history of bad practices, both towards their customers and the broader internet. But that's caught up with them and now the company lives in purgatory.

As others have said above, you get what you pay for. I'd never dream of expecting customer service for something I was getting free.

My GMail account was hacked once; someone set up the vacation reply to send out a spam message to everyone who emailed me. All I had to do was go in to the settings, remove the spam, and change my password to something less guessable. Haven't had a problem since.

Gmail is so superior to other mail services in its features that the lack of service isn't enough of an issue to make me want to use something else. We also use Google apps for company email. All of my various email accounts all funnel to Gmail, and I'm able to send as each of them from it.

I would encourage anyone using Gmail to make sure to use SSL encryption (an easy setting change), and consider the 2-step authorization process:

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/02/advanced-sign-in-security-for-your.html

I just had to give up my aol email address after nearly 15 years of having it. ( I just turned 30). It got hacked somehow and it was spamming everyone in my address book. After numerous attempts to fix it, and apparently wasting money on anti viral software, and having a tech person look at my computer to make sure it wasn't my computer and not my email that was infected, I finally had to suck it up and switch to gmail. Aol wouldn't even let me deactivate my account so technically I still have it although I haven't logged in in three months. Hopefully they will deactivate it from lack of use.I just erased all of my contacts from it so it couldn't spam my friends and professional contacts anymore.
The sucky part was that every account I have and every contact was attached to my aol account. Luckily, I was able to set my gmail to funnel all my aol emails to my gmail inbox until everyone got used to the transitions and all of my accounts had been changed over. But of course, I get gmail for free too so I dont really know what I will expect to get from them in terms of support if something happens to that account too.

I have had an AOL address since 94. Two years ago, I switched from paid AOL to free AOL and email still seems to be working just fine. I use Thunderbird to manage email. I have had a Netzero and Hotmail address for the same length of time. I use Netzero for family, AOL for commerce, and Hotmail for anyone I'm not sure of--Hotmail's spam filter is the strongest I have seen.

Never had AOL, too many of those old bad business practices. (I'd never considered myself an Internet Veteran before, thanks Cousin Dave)

I like Google's attempts to make an integrated system, computer to phone, etc. I also like their ability to provide me services without costing me. I don't pay for any of the apps on my phone, because of their free market.

I have zero spam on Gmail, much better than Gawab. I have practically unlimited storage. I have had my Google account hacked, but it was by someone I knew. I was able to contact Google Support and they had me a new secret code, password, etc., in a few days time.

"I see, AOL is some magic entity immune from hackers and ponzi scheme spam. Its called a spam filter. Its free. And what a laborious process clicking delete when one somehow gets through once a month. And I'm going to make a wild prediction and say that Google will be around for a bit longer than the hemorrhaging hemophiliac that is AOL."

Wow, what a tool.

You guys really help me out . I really need this information.

You guys really help me out . I really need this information.