If there's a company which thinks it can compete with the Internet giants Google and Yahoo and which makes smart moves to challenge them, that's AOL. The famous web portal started the European expansion and it proudly released the Italian flavor of the service, offering the same functions as to the American users. For example, AOL Italy comes with an unlimited storage email technology which would surely compete with the Sunnyvale rival Yahoo which offers a similar product. As you probably heard, Yahoo announced this feature in March when it also decided to implement Yahoo Messenger into the new interface of the mail solution.

But AOL comes with many more features. AOL Video is an online video sharing platform, similar to YouTube but it remained quite anonymous due to the power of the Google video service. Moreover, the Italian AOL portal is equipped with the best search engine on the web as Google agreed to place its search technology on all AOL portals from every corner of the world.

Dana Dunne, Chief Executive Officer of AOL Europe said: "We're very pleased to be launching AOL.it. Italy is a rapidly growing online market, with high broadband penetration and huge opportunities for online advertising. Launching a dedicated portal here will help us compete for both users and advertisers. AOL has the heritage, the infrastructure and the scale to offer Italy a strong local portal that meets the needs of online users."

According to the press release published by AOL, the company really wants to conquer the continent, Italy being only the first country which receives the web portal. It seems like AOL wants to roll out its portal in no less than 14 countries in about 18 months.

"Europe is one of the key engines of growth for AOL. This market is growing faster than the US with online advertising spending in Western Europe forecast to grow by 25% per year until 2009. By launching dedicated portals that have real appeal in local markets, we are well placed to take advantage of this opportunity. We expect to cover over 95% of the Europe online market within 18 months," the AOL representative added.