Yeah I thought it was recent, and I was going to say the 90's called and want their ISP back.

yer on a roll today

I was bored and sorted the forum by date...SmileWavy

Wow, yeah, I think "bored" is an understatement. Hahahah.

Still, it's cool to see these old threads and the folks that are no longer around. It's a shame that some of them are gone.

so far none have taken off as a revivified necro-thread

but if you bump enough of them...

8-track will make a come-back.

My wife can read her AOL mail while in China when nobody can get into their GMail accounts.
Too far under the radar for the Chinese to worry about I guess

I guess I'm one of the few who still uses AOL?

I have a gmail account if that helps.

I know a manager in a tech. firm who has an AOL Email - mostly to f with people's heads when he meets them.

I still think AOL Instant Messenger was the perfect IM program, especially for parents of kids away from home.

Add me to that list.

Me too.

Didn’t even know they still had a platform. Time to stick a fork in it.

With such market dominance, how did AOL end up folding?

I remember stories of charging customers after their contract ended, that sort of nonsense, and I never liked the company for some reason.
Still it would be interesting to examine just how a company on top of it all dies.

With such market dominance, how did VisiCalc end up folding?

With such market dominance, how did Yahoo end up folding?

With such market dominance, how did Lotus 123 end up folding?

Not forward looking. Not constantly innovative. Not becoming ‘user friendly’. Not integrating with and adopting other platforms. Bad management decision making. To list a few.

You of course know the answer. A bigger company came along and either provided the web browser for free, or bundled the software with a office suite of programs for cheap.

Microsoft just killed the pay for web browser market with a free program as part of the OS. They killed the office program market by having Office virtually free, in education formats.

For years there were a dozen or more "Presentation" software packages. PowerPoint just eliminated the competition. Now Office is a major cash cow for them.

Google became dominate by making it "free" and they just sell the information you provide to them to sell you stuff.

the point is that when the big tech EO's testify to Congress that their dominance can evaporate almost instantly, they are not lying

Almost time to resurrect the SCWDP threads .....