AOL Opens Up While Yahoo Closes Down

USA Today reports on AOLs move to place most of its news, sports,
chats and other features on the open Internet. It’s the culmination
of AOL’s 18-month-old plan to vie head-on with Google, Yahoo and
Microsoft as an advertising-driven Web portal. The new strategy is a
bid to offset the loss of millions of subscribers.

As part of a test, online users now can access a Web version of AOL’s
trademark welcome screen and menu of content channels by going to
AOL.com and clicking on a link called "AOL.com Beta Test." Over the
summer, AOL plans to move the programming directly to AOL.com. "Very
quietly, the walled-garden era has ended," AOL Chief Jonathan Miller
told USA Today.   

Meanwhile, ClickZ reports that Yahoo has had to close down shut rooms after advertisers fled from chat rooms used for sex talk. A Houston TV news team discovered pedophiles trying to lure minors there.
In response to the revelation, several marquee advertisers had already
pulled their ads from those pages.
According to KPRC, advertisers including PepsiCo, State Farm Insurance,
Countrywide Mortgage and T-Mobile yanked their ad placements from all Yahoo! chat rooms after being told by reporters that their messages had appeared adjacent to forum discussions on sex with minors, among other topics.

USA Today
ClickZ