What’s AOL up to lately, marketshare-wise? I can imagine that they’ve taken a big hit in the last 5 years, give or take, so what are they doing with their time and resources? Are they going broke, or diversifying?
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Share of what market though? It’s all smeared these days - as an ISP? Search engine? News provider? Browser (shudder)? Or do you mean share of the entire stock market?
The business they get paid for is as an ISP, so that’s probably the best metric.
AOL’s primary business has always been advertising, so that’s a better metric.
AOL’s entire business these days is entirely due to inertia.
I remember a while back reading about how 10% of internet users still use dial-up and have no plans of upgrading. I assume AOL and NetZero split that amongst themselves.
AOL software sucks donkey dick.
I still use my AOL account, mostly because I have had it for 15 years and anyone who ever knew it can easily still find me. (It is my first initial + my last name.)
As I said - inertia.
Yeah inertia. I was visiting my 80 year old aunt about five years ago and she showed me a promo she had just gotten from AOL (which she had been subscribing to since the 90s. Imagine this: what they were offering her was that if she subscribed to a high-speed internet service (for which she was on her own), she could continue to use AOL and, get this, at no extra cost. She was asking me what to do. I told her that if it were me, I would get the high-speed service and drop AOL. Trouble is, that is where everyone emailed her and I assume they will not forward even if she pays them a small fee. After all, why should they? It is the only hold they have on subscribers.
One thing that really pissed me off is that when she visited here (probably at least ten years ago), there was no way she could check her mail from here. I assume they have fixed that by now, but it would have been enough to convince me to drop them right there.