My sister Hannah is the answer to the question, why are AOL's subscriptions falling? A dabbler in the internet, she and her family paid for AOL dialup for years; even though she's now married with a real job, she's kept her AOL address from when she still lived at home with my parents. Last month, she called us to ask about this wonderful world of high-speed internet, and a few days later, Comcast came into her home and switched her over. She cancelled her AOL account.

Many like Hannah have kept their AOL account just for the email address. And though two-thirds of U.S. internet users now have high-speed internet access, AOL's user base is very different; approximately one-third of AOL users are high-speed customers, according to the AP. Yet Time Warner is rumored to be considering a very radical plan: making the coveted aol.com addresses free for users who have switched to other providers' high-speed services.

With Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft all offering a wide variety of free email options, and AOL's content now available to all comers, competitive strategy seems to dictate that Time Warner's decision should be already be made. Is board, who might say yes to the plan in their meeting this Thursday, will have to weigh the potential dollar losses (said to be $1 billion between now and 2009) against the untold customer goodwill and increased "eyeballs."

America is all Online now, right? TimeWarner says that its division, American Online, has now accomplished its eponymous mission and managed to get America, from purple mountains to fruited plains, on the Internet. Thus the division is changing its name officially to "AOL LLC."

The "LLC" organization will reflect the 5% stake Google purchased last week.

According to an email sent to all employees (including yours truly), "consumers already know us by our initials and believe that AOL stands for a more contemporary Internet company." I can't imagine this news will have much of an impact on the consumer experience -- I mean, when was the last time you said "America Online"? -- but it's interesting to hear the rationale behind it.

(And, as an aside, this news comes at about the same time the company rolls out all new business cards for its AOL employees - they're pretty and vertical and so much better than the old ones. I wonder if there's any correlation between vertically-oriented business cards and stock price?)