AOL to be split up
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A dinosaur from the early days of online communities may finally be put out of it’s misery.
The blogosphere is a twitter today about the breakup of AOL and Time Warner. Which was one of the most asinine mergers to begin with, but after many years of trying to make it work, the higher ups at Time Warner have finally decided to cut AOL loose.
So now the squabbling begins, who is going to get AOL? In my mind the question should be – Who would want AOL?
I always considered AOL the Internet on training wheels. Does anyone else remember the floppies with AOL software on them? Or the CD ROMS that were so plentiful some people made art out of them? When I first ventured online in 1995, I did so with CompuServe and my 14.4 modem connected to my 286.
A lot of my co workers at the time were on AOL so after a lot of cajoling I finally succumbed and joined. I wasn’t overly impressed as it was just another CompuServe. Between the two of them, GEnie and Prodigy they were the original walled gardens. Everything in one place so you didn’t have to leave to go out into the internet. Actually with AOL you didn’t have internet access. But like a boy from a small town who has got a taste of the big city, once I ventured out into the web there was no looking back to CompuServe or AOL.
I also remember that trying to QUIT AOL was a nightmare. They charged my credit card for several months after I quit and it took a lot of teeth pulling with their customer “service” to get my card credited. I wasn’t alone, AOL was the target of many lawsuits and one blogger posted his communications with AOL on a very famous post.
For many AOL and it’s users became quite a joke. Except for the occasional news story as far as anyone I knew was concerned AOL once mergd with Time Warner was a thing of the past.
So let Yahoo and Microsoft squabble over AOL, it’s been dead in my mind for years anyway.
