AOL is now providing free e-mail addresses on domains it registers at the user’s command — at no cost.

You read that correct, anyone can go to domains.aol.com enter a new domain name and AOL will register it for them if it is available. The catch is AOL owns it, not the user. John DeMayo speculated how AOL could turn a profit on a move that could cost them millions of dollars. I have a few different ideas on how this could help both AOL and impact the domain name market.

First, AOL is making use of an SMS confirmation to use this service. That would make it very difficult for spammers and blackhatters to abuse. (Hmm, wonder if someone has patented this idea yet.) Besides being an effective anti-spam tool could AOL use this number for other commercial means?

Second, how could this impact the domain name market? My guess is very little for most name niches. However, this could have a huge impact on entertainment and human name domains. I’d like to take a look back at this in a year and see how many domain names AOL owns.