Comments on: Choose your own email through AOL http://www.teach42.com/2007/06/15/choose-your-own-email-through-aol/ Education and Technology by Steve Dembo Fri, 04 Jul 2008 15:50:36 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.5 By: Michael Eakes http://www.teach42.com/2007/06/15/choose-your-own-email-through-aol/#comment-72597 Michael Eakes Sun, 17 Jun 2007 05:56:50 +0000 http://www.teach42.com/2007/06/15/choose-your-own-email-through-aol/#comment-72597 Hi there, this "free" domain name is a very interesting development. I couldn't resist looking up your domain name record in <a href="http://whois.org/" rel="nofollow">whois</a>: Domain Name: educatorsarecool.com Registrant: AOL LLC 22000 AOL Way Dulles, VA 20166 US Your creative choice for a domain name is now, in fact, owned by AOL, and probably always will be. I would definitely recommend avoiding building an identity or site with a name that you do not own, because you will never be able to take it away from AOL. The more you pass out that email address, the more you are locked-in, and the more unlikely you are to ever leave AOL because of the growing inconvenience of losing your email address. And even if they ever did let you put "your own site" up, it would be subject to AOL's terms, and surely they would monetize your traffic if it was popular. I recently wrote some steps to create (and completely own) <a href="http://www.eakes.org/archives/2007/06/avoid-email-lockin-own-your-em_1.html" rel="nofollow"> email at your own domain</a> on my blog. Best, Michael Hi there, this “free” domain name is a very interesting development.

I couldn’t resist looking up your domain name record in whois:

Domain Name: educatorsarecool.com
Registrant:
AOL LLC
22000 AOL Way
Dulles, VA 20166
US

Your creative choice for a domain name is now, in fact, owned by AOL, and probably always will be. I would definitely recommend avoiding building an identity or site with a name that you do not own, because you will never be able to take it away from AOL. The more you pass out that email address, the more you are locked-in, and the more unlikely you are to ever leave AOL because of the growing inconvenience of losing your email address.

And even if they ever did let you put “your own site” up, it would be subject to AOL’s terms, and surely they would monetize your traffic if it was popular.

I recently wrote some steps to create (and completely own)
email at your own domain on my blog.

Best,
Michael

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