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But once people make the switch, not everyone stays. "We get 30 percent of our customers directly from AOL, but we lose 10 percent of those customers in the first 30 days," says Betty. "They run into a snag -- it could be anything. These people often aren't very familiar with computers." Betty hopes that EarthLink will hold onto more newbies with Earthlink 5.0, its new client, which deliberately mimics AOL, with integrated e-mail and browsing.

The latest EarthLink ads, which compare herd@aol.com to heard@earthlink.net and goliath689@aol.com to david@earthlink.net, capitalize on the more savvy Net population's view of America Online as a gargantuan clearinghouse for the lowest common denominator of surfer.

"I still feel disdain when I hear an aol.com e-mail address," says Cynsa Bonorris, a programmer at Web development house Construct. "It's residual from the early days of the Internet -- how completely lame the newbies were compared to the nerds on the Web. They didn't go through the same trial by fire to get online, like figuring out how to set up Winsock on their PC."

Curt feels no shame about having an AOL address. Most of his compatriots use AOL too. When I consider that, I start to realize that my crusade to spring him from AOL is rooted, at least somewhat, in an insidery notion of what being online is supposed to mean. (As Huette puts it: "It's like the platform wars -- Windows vs. Unix, or Linux vs. FreeBSD. We all want to convert others to what we know.") Slowly, though, I'm starting to get it: For Curt and millions of others, being online may mean something different from what it means for me.

But I'm not done yet.

David Cassel, a computer consultant and journalist who runs the AOL Watch mailing list, calls AOL a giant marketing machine that "puts a benign face on exploiting consumers."

He says that one of the company's irksome traits is deluging its members with advertising. "You know how when you log off, you get this message, 'Please wait while we update your software?'" says Cassel. "Well, they don't tell you, but what they're really doing is downloading ads to your hard drive, so that the very next time you sign on, you get hit with -- boom! -- an ad. You get ads in your mailbox and in your chat room and an ad in the status bar."

AOL spokeswoman Tricia Primrose denies that claim, saying that the software updates are limited to tools and graphics -- never ads. The ads are downloaded while users are connected, she says, but ads are not stored on their hard drives.

In any case, AOL is famous for its pop-up ads, which are the first thing members see when they log on. And observers are wondering if the technique will make its way to Time Warner's online properties, if and when the AOL Time Warner merger goes through.

Curt, however, is unfazed by all this talk. "AOL sends me lots of ads, but I don't look at any of them," he says. Hmm. That's the same thing a lot of people say about ads on the Internet or commercial TV.

Some of AOL's fans do voice complaints about the service. "Some things about AOL are really maddening -- like the long waits when you need customer service, the large amount of spam you get if you fill out a profile in the membership directory and the way you sometimes can't connect because too many other people are already logged on," says Miller of USA Today.

"In some ways, they almost can't win, because some of the things that are the most irritating to some people are things that AOL has done to try to prevent some of the problems that annoy others -- like automatically logging you off if you're 'idle' for too long," Miller continues. "But I think most of the problems are factors of its size -- 20 million people is bigger than most giant cities, and there are bound to be some traffic jams and other inconveniences."

It turns out Curt, too, had a complaint about AOL: its influence over where people decide to spend their surfing time. "When you do a Net search, it searches through AOL first, and then provides links to the Internet," Curt complains. "They're going to control how I get on the Web -- that's the part that bothers me."

I seize upon this opening. "So, you've thought about switching?"

He has, but there are lots of reasons why he still won't really consider it; for one thing, the hassle of changing his e-mail address. He defends his inertia: "I have a phone that I use every day, and even though there's a better phone out there, am I going to go and switch phones?"

But the biggest disincentive for Curt to switch turns out to be, curiously enough, cheap phone calls. Through a deal with Tel-Save, AOL offers its customers cheap long distance phone rates. "I don't even look at my phone bills anymore," he says.

It seems kind of bizarre that my crusade against AOL would end with a discussion of how much it costs to call Canada. But that direct appeal to the pocketbook is something I simply couldn't counter with ideological arguments.

It's undoubtedly true that AOL has been influential in making the Internet a bigger place. "I'm not a cheerleader," says Cataldo, "but the big issue is, how are we going to get all those people out there using the Internet? They've provided a guideline on how to bring people to technology."

The question is, will the rest of us ever be content to let people brought online by AOL stay on AOL?
salon.com | Feb. 2, 2000

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