An AOL memo from its Vice President Kevin Conroy that leaked to the media said that the company will close down or sell three of its services, more precisely Xdrive, AOL Pictures and Bluestring. The move comes as part of the company's strategy to shift its business to the more lucrative Internet advertising space, in which the company has little prominence.

Xdrive is a service that allows people to store data on AOL servers, while AOL Pictures is somewhat similar to Yahoo's Flickr. Bluestring is the company's video, photo and music sharing service. Both Xdrive and AOL Photos are services that AOL subscribers to its dial-up Internet services were getting access to.

It is very likely that AOL is going through changes in an attempt to sell its business to companies that have a more solid financial situation. This is the reason for which it is important for AOL to separate the two directions in which it is going: providing dial-up Internet access and offering online services that rely on advertising to generate profit.

The two companies that could be interested and have a chance at buying AOL are Yahoo and Microsoft. Both of them are seeking ways to increase their share of the Internet advertising market, and AOL would offer them a good chance to do so.

AOL is currently thinking on how to make sure that the people who use their Xdrive and AOL Pictures service don't lose the data they stored on the company's servers. One way to accomplish this would be to put their data on CDs or DVDs and mail them to the subscribers, while the other one would be to encourage them to appeal to AOL partners to import the data on their servers.