Verizon Brand Sabotage

Today in "boneheaded corporate moves", we have Verizon.

My mother has triple-play (Internet/phone/TV) service from Verizon; as such, her primary email address is currently through verizon.net, as you'd expect. She also has a Gmail address, that I nudged her into.

She got a letter yesterday, announcing that Verizon is terminating its email service. She has three weeks to decide whether to transition entirely to a third-party service, or switch to AOL.

AOL.

Even Mom, who is, shall we say, not the most tech-savvy member of the family, had the reaction of, "Isn't AOL -- bad?". I've told her to just switch everything to her Gmail account: while Google may not be my favorite company in the world, this is yet more proof that getting your email through your ISP is just a bad plan.

But still -- AOL? Really? I mean, yes, they want to justify their ownership of the stupid company, but that's one of the most poisoned brands in the history of tech. Pushing all of their ISP customers over to it seems like a recipe to lose a lot of customers, with no obvious benefit.

Anybody have any insights into this apparently-foolish move?