The merger AOL Time Warner was a pity, at that time, they could have the content, the reach, the technology to be the next Google and somehow they missed.
I remember hoping for one of those cd's in the mail awhile ago when I didn't have any internet access at all. :[
myspace is what is putting aol under they offer all the things aol did but now even cooler and free. i honestly never liked aol because they do not offer news groups or pop3 mail they had one good thing going for them a long time ago and it was free dating on love@aol but once so many people started using it they started charging for it just like any of there services anyone would like they would eventually start charging for it thats stupid and thats why they are going to be going out of business soon or just remain at the bottom forever.
It was all in the marketing. With about a billion disks sent by snail mail they were bound to get a few bites. Too bad Time Warner didn't understand what a bunch of crap AOL was before they flushed enough money down the toilet to feed every last starving human on the planet. Alan
I agree. AOL was so bad I can remember people I know could not find my website because they were using aol and something was blocking them from accessing the whole of the www. I am not saying they did it deliberately but if not it must have been incompetence within their organization. On the bright side, those disks were fun to fling off the tops of various buildings.
They used to be so desperate for customers even in their "good" days. I would call to cancel every 3 months and they would offer me 3 months free. So I basically leeched off of them for free for almost a year before I finally turned down the free internet for cable lol.
About damn time. Know why Google beats AOL? Know why Gmail beats? Simplicity. K.I.S.S. Not "LETS BLOAT THE HELL OUT OF IT AND PASTE ADS EVERYWHERE! WHEEEEEEE! WHEEEEEEEEEE! ADS! ITS SNOWING ADS! WHEEEEEEEE! USELESS FEATURES! SLOW ASS AIM 6.X.X WITH DAILY ANTI SCREWUP CUZ WE SUCK PATCHES! MORE ADS! WHEEEEE! ANNOYING BLOATED FLASH ADS! WHEEEEEE! SLOWNESS! WHEEEE! WE SUCK! WE SUCK HARD! WHEEEEE!" I feel bad for Time Warner.
I would use a Lynx text highlight only browser rather before using anything that is AOL driven.. I remember about 6 years ago when that place tried to keep billing me and sending me bills for a year after I even used it, on an account I canceled 4 times.. I would not use the internet if all there was, was AOHell.. Boulder
Poor Time Warner. They saw the seductive AOL spam model and thought 'You know what? We're Time Warner! We can keep one little parasitic company alive, nurture it, and grow it into a beautiful hive of cash syphoning goodness!'. And now? They're hoping Yahoo, or MSN would pick it up? Do they think either company is ready to staple their genitals to the wall like that? I'm not sure what you guys think, but I believe if they aquired AOL for anything more than taking, and removing the spyware/adware/whateverware from AIM then torching the rest of the business to the ground would only make them push more of their traffic away to google. Oh, on a small sidenote. Peerguardian keeps blocking Time Warner IP's for me. And lets be honest. AOL only has users for two reasons: #1. AIM. #2. You can get AOL installed for free. Since #1 doesn't require actually having AOL on your computer, or even AIM (I use pidgin now, got sick of their underhanded tactics), that only leaves #2. This means their entire business panders to people who are too frugal, or too poor to actually afford proper internet service. There's also too naive, but that group gets wise soon enough.