• Reuters, Thursday, May 17, 2007 10:32 AM

AOL's global expansion is well underway. The Time Warner Company in the 18 months will launch a retooled Web portal in 14 countries, many of them new. AOL India, Austria and the Netherlands have launched this year, while revamped versions in Germany, France and UK are set to follow. The move is interesting, considering that the Times Warner unit sold its AOL Europe business last year.As part of the retooled site, AOL is adding AOL Instant Messenger to its email service, a la Gmail and Google Talk, and social media services.

"I want to move as fast as we can," CEO Randy Falco told the Reuters Global Technology, Media and Telecoms Summit in New York.

Rivals would agree that nimbleness-or rather, versatility-is essential but moving quickly doesn't equal success. AOL maintains that its unveiling a steady stream of new products, and if they are, is anyone paying attention? The news media certainly isn't: short of a big announcement, little has been said about AOL's success with its new content offerings. However, the company's decision to sell ads on its email service was a smart one: the Reuters report says some 52% of its user page views come from email. That's also a bit worrying, especially when you consider that search accounts for a big chunk of page views, too. So how much belongs to the content?

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