Unfortunately, it's not true. According to Snopes, it's simply a prank/spam message that has been going around since 1997. While it would be amazing to be paid to try out a service, as is done by many other companies, it could be seen as a waste of money for both Microsoft and AOL alike (at least for a service like email).

Numerous other companies, the most exceptional and outstanding of which is Google, have applied free "beta testing" programs to a limited number of users. This way, users don't feel restrained from commenting on problems, bugs, or otherwise negative points of a service so much as when they are being paid, which could manipulate their opinions slightly. Google, therefore, loses no money.

Others, such as Apple, have had great success doing the opposite: being payed to allow pre-release software to be tried out and reviewed. A developer would need to pay Apple for an expensive subscription to be able to access a pre-release operating system version. Apple hence receives money for having testers and doesn't lose anything.

To summarize, the rumor isn't true and it would be a bad market strategy for the two companies.
Source(s):
http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/nothing/microsoft-aol.asp


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