AOL is having a pretty bad run over the past month or so.

First there was the uproar created when Vincent Ferrari tried to cancel his account. This was followed up with stories of folks having trouble canceling the accounts of deceased relatives.

This was followed by a leak to the WSJ about moving to a free service

In what would mark a dramatic shift in strategy, Time Warner Inc.’s AOL unit is considering offering its entire menu of services, including email, free of charge to anyone with a high-speed Internet connection, people familiar with the matter said.

Which seems like a pretty darn good idea to me given the rate at which they are losing paying access customers. Of course they have to execute.

Which might be a bit of a problem. Giving stuff away seems to have its own set of challenges. Again, according to the WSJ:

As many of the Time Warner Inc. unit’s 17.7 million subscribers in the U.S. have started logging on to explore the company’s offer, they have run into a logistical tangle that has left them scratching their heads over how and when to switch to free service — and vexed to find out they are being asked to do it by phone.

They then made the mistake of releasing the Web search data of about 650,000 users.

But buried in one of the WSJ articles was this statement:

A package for $25.90 a month … includes additional security features and 50 GB of backup storage.

This is via Xdrive. That is a lot of storage. At $.50/GB per month. And they are giving away 5GB for free. Perhaps this is just what the crowed online storage market needs to take off. And I am not alone in thinking it is gonna take off.

Then again, try finding the offer on the Xdrive site.

Here is some help.

If they can clean up the Xdrive Web site, client software, and Web app they are heading in the right direction. If they can then layer more file type specific applications on top of the storage, AOL has the right concept here. If…