On 28/02/14 08:47, Stroller wrote: > On Wed, 26 February 2014, at 8:29 pm, Walter Dnes <waltd...@waltdnes.org> > wrote: >> … >> * Netscape (under AOL) aimed at becoming a pseudo-OS on top of Windows. >> We know how that turned out. > You appear to be underestimating it - whilst the AOL suite was hated by many > of those "forced to use it" (I guess in the late 90's or early 00's), it is / > was so massively popular with grannies that it is still available today. > > Dial-up division is still AOL's most profitable division, earning them $500m > per year,[1] and I would attribute the popularity of the AOL desktop suite to > this. > > I've seen this profitability attributed to "misinformed customers" who "don't > know they no-longer need AOL now they have DSL", but having been told by a > number of people that all they want out of their computer is their AOL, I > find it had to agree with that characterisation. > > AOL's desktop suite has certainly not been a failure for the company. > > Stroller. > > > > > [1] http://www.technobuffalo.com/2013/02/18/aol-dial-up-profits/ > >
This must be a US -only thing since I've never even heard of AOL desktop/suite before, even while lived through the 90's and the bulletin board times (as being a SysOp myself ;-)
