It's a pipe dream, but I wish America Offline would die a slow and painful death...
//rant mode on
My last dealings with that virus of the Internet was when they acquired CompuServe. I used to be a CompuServe customer from back in the day; well before the web became a main way of accessing it... They said they'd leave the service alone; but AO-Hell can't keep their greasy paws outa things; just too tempting.
About a year after the companies merged; I started getting every single fricken billing problem that AO-Hell customers had been complaining about for years. It culminated in them trying to double bill me; and then because I only had the money in my checking account to pay the bill once
all I'm contractually obligated to do, they suspended my service.
As turns out, they reversed the charges on the first billing to my card (their fault, not mine) so thought it would be cool to suspend service because my credit union hadn't payed them a second time, for the same bill, in a given month.
And yes, the second billing attempt was made before they reversed charges for the payment they did receive. It was the first time I've ever had to go to the Better Business Beureu to get something resolved with a company in the past.
Sometime latter, the BBB contacted me to report AO-Hell has rebuffed their communications, and they're being put on file as a non-responsive company.
Only then did they decide to do something about it, and sent a load of PR bull, in response to having been told by the BBB that this is how they were going to be recorded...
Latter I did cancel my service with them; but they thought it would be qute to continue trying to bill my check card. I ended up going down to the credit union, told them I closed the account down, and the CU filed out the forms to declare it as fraudulent charges against my card. They said they were reversing the charges for now, and would launch an investigation. If they found the charges to be legitimate, they'd be re-applied to my card, otherwise forget about it.
So, 1 year latter, the billing dept (which had before this already started, merged with the AO-Hell billing dept; to save from having 2 seperate staffs covering the same thing) decided to send me a letter complaining that my bank won't let them bill my card anymore. They were like "will you pay us..." To hell with that, I cancelled service. I'm under no obligation to continue paying for a service I no longer have. And the worst of it? I never signed up with them. They had a corporate merger with the company I had been a long time customer of at that point... This company has a special place in my heart, and it isn't for things I like...
//rant mode off
The executives close to the talks said that at AOL's request, Google would begin to test various forms of graphical ads and that it would make the same formats available to other advertisers. Google has started to sell graphical ads for placement on other sites; plans to do so on Google itself were accelerated by the AOL talks, an executive involved in the negotiations said.
If google turns into a AO-Hell spam fest, time to find another search engine I guess. Not sure how long it will take for AOL to destroy this as well...