New York ? A year ago, America Online Inc. was seen as an ailing dinosaur of the dial-up era, its Internet access business fading fast.

But now that it’s tapping into the online advertising boom by opening up its content to anyone who wants it, AOL is a hot property being courted by powerhouse suitors including Microsoft Corp., Google Inc. and Comcast Corp.

Google and Comcast are said to be in talks about taking a joint stake in AOL for its Web portal. That follows discussions between Microsoft and AOL parent Time Warner Inc. about a possible partnership with the MSN online business.

Credit AOL’s decision to abandon its longtime strategy of exclusivity and unleash its rich array of offerings – concerts, news, sports and e-mail – to the World Wide Web for free, a model Yahoo Inc. drove to become the Web’s top brand.

“They were a company waiting to die,” industry analyst Rob Enderle said Thursday of AOL. “They’ve done some work to make the property more attractive. The portal strategy is what gave them a future.”