Other on-line companies have followed Prodigy's lead for some basic services.

This is a very different approach from that taken by most on-line companies.

All the on-line companies are moving to shift their proprietary services onto the Web.

And what happens if your on-line company should change owners or disappear altogether?

AOL is not the only on-line company to use volunteers.

The company also has a premium service attached to on-line companies like Compuserve and a market research firm.

As a result, most on-line companies offer software tools to prevent children from entering certain chat rooms.

Intrigued, we made a reservation by telephone through an on-line company, Lodging.com.

And it is pushing on-line companies to master the back end of their businesses.

The on-line companies say current laws, public education and responsible parents are the best means to protect children from objectionable materials on the Internet.