In the US, Microsoft is

In the US, Microsoft is announcing an AOL defection tool to make it easy for consumers to switch from AOL's online service to Microsoft's MSN network. Microsoft has put a huge amount of work into making MSN a better experience for beginners, and this includes developing the separate MSN Explorer browser, integrating multimedia services, and redesigning its huge Web sites including MSN and Hotmail. The resulting MSN service is also more Web standard than AOL (which is ultimately derived from a proprietary service incompatible with the Internet) and a little cheaper. AOL may yet come to regret spending the past few years working on its merger with CNN Time Warner and "competing" via the courts instead of investing in making similar improvements to its products.