The Web: What's the appeal of free e-mail?

Chicago, IL, Jun. 8 (UPI) -- America Online introduced free e-mail for the Web this week, aiming to vie with existing offerings from Microsoft's Hotmail, Yahoo! Mail and Google's Gmail, but experts told UPI's The Web the free e-mail concept's time already may have passed.
Only a small portion of Internet users take advantage of free e-mail accounts, with most preferring to use e-mail provided by commercial services or their own companies.

"Coca-Cola does not do business with a free e-mail account, and neither do most small businesses," said Mike Neumeier, a spokesman for Interland, a Web-hosting company in Atlanta. "Even small businesses want a domain name that identifies who they are." By Gene Koprowski