America Online will begin offering a free e-mail service on Wednesday tied to its popular instant messaging service, ahead of a big relaunch of its free AOL.com Web site later this year.

AOL's free Web-based e-mail service is nearly a decade behind Microsoft's Hotmail service and several years behind a Yahoo e-mail offering.

But the online division of Time Warner is betting that the combination of e-mail with its ubiquitous instant messaging software (AIM) will create a more powerful service combining all electronic and phone messages. Story Continues