AOL Launches in Switzerland

AOL Europe today launches AOL.ch, a bilingual online destination that combines industry leading safety features with interactive services such as free e-mail, instant messaging as well as localized news in both French and German. Winamp, AOL’s state-of-the-art personalized media player is also available to Swiss users.

Dana Dunne, Chief Executive Officer of AOL Europe said: “We’re very pleased to be launching AOL.ch. Switzerland is a rapidly growing online market, with high broadband penetration and huge opportunities for online advertising. Launching AOL’s product and services here will help us compete for both users and advertisers. The launch of AOL.ch underlines our commitment to the continent and an important step in our strategy to expand AOL’s services in Europe. We expect to cover 95 percent of the Europe online advertising market within the next 17 months.”

AOL.ch’s features include:

* • AOL’s e-mail service with industry leading spam blocking, powerful virus protection and unlimited storage. Early adopters of AOL’s e-mail service in Switzerland can take advantage of the open name space, which makes many first name / last name combinations available. • The full integration of AIM (AOL Instant Messenger) with the e-mail product allowing AOL e-mail users to share pictures, videos, files, and folders with friends via multiple concurrent conversations and identities.
* • Winamp Media Player, with unique streaming content as well as remote functionality to enjoy your media on various platforms.
* • AOL Search includes enhanced Web, image and video search. Web and image search powered by Google™ simplifies search on the Web. Video search powered by Truveo enables consumers to get to the videos they want faster.
* • Local language news and entertainment in French and German.
* • AOL Toolbar allows easy access to AOL services from anywhere on the web: preview your e-mail inbox; share your favourite links and pages with your buddies.
* • Users can access a wealth of music content via the AOL Germany Music service.

Over the past year, AOL has transitioned itself into a global Web-based, advertising supported company. AOL is focused on products and programming leadership on the Web; rapid international growth; and building a world-leading sophisticated advertising network. In recent months AOL has revamped its product and programming line-up, launched portals in Austria, Netherlands, India, Italy, Spain, and Sweden, and has acquired several advertising businesses, including ADTECH, Third Screen Media, and TACODA.

* Source: “Advertising Forecast 2006” by Zenithoptimedia