AOL to Launch free E-Mail Service

Its subscription business in decline, Time Warner Inc.’s America Online is launching another product on the open Web: a free, ad-supported e-mail service tied to its instant-messaging platform.

Users of AOL Instant Messenger will be able to send and receive mail with “aim.com” addresses using their existing AIM screen names. Each account comes with 2 gigabytes of storage -- comparable with Google Inc.’s Gmail.