Who Wants to Dump AOL More: Time Warner or AOL Users?

Some people try to get rid of extra flab, but Scott Lorenz's New Year's resolution was to get rid of America Online(AOL).

For the past three years, Lorenz, president of Westwind Communications, a Michigan-based public relations firm, has been using Comcast(CMCSA) for his broadband access and AOL for his dial-up needs. At first, the $24.95 a month was worth it. Lorenz's wife liked AOL's comfortable interface while his children liked the instant messenger service to chat with their friends.

But the amount of spam and pop-up advertisements from AOL increased, while his service from Comcast improved. The straw that broke the camel's back came when Comcast made it easier for Lorenz to check his email while on the road, eliminating his need to forward emails to an AOL account.

"At $25 a month, I just thought there was a couple hundred dollars there that can be put back in my pocket," said Lorenz, who says he also grew tired of AOL's pokey dial-up connections and time-consuming updates. "AOL's dial-up was great for a long time, but once you eat steak its hard to go back to hamburger."

There is an odd symmetry between what transpires within the corridors at AOL Time Warner and what occurs at a growing number of the 35 million households using the Internet service: AOL is increasingly seen as expensive, unnecessary and something of a drag.

AOL Time Warner managed to jettison Chairman and AOL founder Steve Case and may drop the AOL name in the coming months. However, it is still saddled with the struggling Internet business -- and with Web users apparently evolving beyond AOL, it presents a problem that likely will outlast Case and the moniker.

Training Wheels for the Web

Half of all American households will have broadband access by 2005, according to industry tracker Soundview Technology. And like Lorenz, they're not necessarily picking AOL, which accounts for only 5% of the broadband Internet service provider market.