As previously discussed on the Best Damn Tech Show, Period, AOL has announced that they will indeed be making many of their paid services available for free to their members. In this ground-breaking, earth-shattering move it looks as though they’re maneuvering to secure more revenue from advertising, and will no longer be charging customers some $15 per month for sub par email services, parental controls, spam blah blahs.

AOL are banking on the fact that users are no longer willing to pay for services that they can get better, elsewhere after seeing subscription revenue drop 11% during this 2nd quarter while online ad revenue rose some 40%. They’re also reeling from some fairly aggressive sales tactics as revealed in the receorded phone call of someone who was wanting to cancel their subscription but had great difficulty.

They’ve tried this rebranding strategy before during the Live8 concerts where they offered the video service for free but never really capitalized on it.

Amazingly, they’re still offering their dial-up services for around $26 a month. Even more amazing is that people continue to use them. We’ll see if this latest effort is more smoke and mirrors and will increase their decline or if indeed, this will be a step in the right direction. It’s going to take a lot for me to value them at all.