Executives at AOL Time Warner, the parent company of AOL, are no longer requiring its many high-profile divisions to exclusively use an e-mail service developed by AOL's Netscape subsidiary. This flies in the face of a directive established last May that required all AOL Time Warner employees to use AOL technology as their corporate e-mail service.
Since the merger between AOL and Time Warner, executives have been trying to weave AOL's influence throughout the company's diverse array of media and entertainment companies. In the case of using AOL e-mail, the move was a gesture of solidarity behind the service and also offered potential cost savings by eliminating licensing fees for corporate e-mail software, such as Microsoft's Outlook or IBM's Lotus Notes.
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