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To: dbblg who wrote (81269)	10/20/1999 8:42:00 AM
From: Eric Wells	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 164684

Ganesh - you are right - I did not address Merenbloom's argument - mainly because Merenbloom completely dodged addressing the competitive threat that free access poses. Instead, for some reason, he diverted attention to the churn issue (is Merenbloom a sell-side analyst? I should send him a copy of Arthur Levitt's speech). Like you, I know of no one that is using free internet access. And I'm sure this afternoon that AOL won't show any sign of negative impact on revenue and profit from free access providers. I still see free or lower-cost access as a thread to AOL regardless. Thanks, -Eric

To: dbblg who wrote (81269)	10/20/1999 12:07:00 PM
From: Lizzie Tudor	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 164684

I don't know anyone who has a free isp as their sole online access. Do you? I signed up for altavista just to see what all the fuss was about and immediately invested in aol calls the next day. Tolerating passive ads is bad enough - and believe me it is bad because the ads are on the top of the screen the entire time and there is no way to remove them... but it goes a step further and forces the user to click on an ad and become an active participant or else it hangs up! Its just intolerable if you ask me.