Steven J. Vaughn-Nichols
When someone offers you something for nothing, there's usually a catch. In the case of free Internet E-mail, the catch is the same one that comes with free TV: advertising.
Two companies, Freemark Communications (Cambridge, MA) and Juno Internet Services (New York, NY), are launching free, completely advertiser supported E-mail programs this fall. Both programs run on Windows, and both companies plan to offer Mac versions in 1996. Both products use proprietary interfaces and Internet connections. Thus, you won't be able to use their connections with another E-mail program, such as QualComm's Eudora, or another Internet application, such as Netscape.
The target audience of these products is people with little or no on-line experience. The i
dea behind each program is that while interest in the Internet and the World Wide Web is high, E-mail is currently the most popular application on the Internet and is growing in importance (
see the chart
). These free services are tailored for those who want just E-mail. The "price" you must pay is reading the ads that are attached to your incoming E-mail. Users may object to having to read these ads, but Prodigy has already shown that it's possible to combine advertising with an on-line service.
Both Juno and Freemark support basic E-mail only; neither supports Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (MIME) for binary attachments. Freemark will provide a toll-free phone number for nationwide network connectivity in the U.S. At press time, Juno said it may offer toll-free phone numbers, X.25 WANs, and local phone numbers. Juno can be reached at
http://www.juno.com
, and Freemark at
http://www.freemark.com/
. Considering the minimal cost of using a conventional on-line service ($100 to $200 annually) for E-mail, however, only the most cost conscious users are likely to find either service of much interest.
illustration_link (25 Kbytes)
A survey of 1600 U.S. businesses done by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce indicates that 81 percent plan to use E-mail by 1999, but only 57 percent will use videoconferencing.
Coming: (Almost) Free Internet E-Mail
