The new mail feature gives users access to email services from Yahoo, Gmail and Hotmail, in addition to AOL and AIM Mail. Users can access their email accounts from different providers by visiting AOL.com and clicking on the email icons.

Furthermore, users can take a quick look at their various email accounts thanks to the Mail Preview Panels feature. By clicking on an individual message users can navigate directly to it. AOL has also provided a link for each mail provider to launch a window to compose a message with just one click.

The addition is part of AOL’s new strategy to offer more consumer choice and customization:

“With the launch of mail aggregation, AOL will be the first among the big traditional portals to offer a centralized email experience,” commented Bill Wilson, Executive Vice President of Programming, AOL. “We know that consumers today have multiple email accounts on different services to keep tabs on daily, and we want to make it easier for them. This is an important first step in opening up AOL.com and giving users the ability to populate the AOL.com homepage with content and services they use on a daily basis, regardless of where it lives.”

Users are to experience new features in the near future, such as an enhanced control over the site’s displayed content and services, giving them the ability to add their own web links in the main navigation bar and access custom feeds from social networking services, local news, and RSS enabled sites directly from the main page of AOL.com.

AOL.com also debuted an extended navigation bar, offering direct access to a wider variety of the company’s industry-leading content and services. New additions to the content directory include popular sites such as TMZ, StyleList, ParentDish, Wallet Pop, Asylum and more.