How does AOL stay in business?

I don’t think anyone on the entire planet has an answer to this. It’s a great mystery.

Stupid people who don’t know that the Internets exist outside of AOL.

Do they still have services besides web browsing?

They have AIM. That’s a pretty good way right there.

Well now that they’ve merged with Time Warner I think it’s only because it’s a subset of the internet market that Bright House offers. The rest of the company can reduce the impact of losses that AOL might have. The only thing left of AOL is really just AIM and the lingering dial-up service.

Human sacrifice in their basement.

They can’t live without that lovely and completely useless little “You’ve got mail” opener, possibly?

i just had to “fix” someones computer recently. He was complaining about how slow it was running whenever he tried using the internet. Turns out he was still using AOL, so i threw chrome on there. You would have thought i resurrected someone from the dead the way he reacted to the speed improvement :P

~Perhaps they survive on the memberships they refuse to cancel.

AOL is so early 2000s. Seriously, AOL, Razor scooters, and boy-bands are the three things that sum up the early 2000s. I remember back then when TV commercials would advertise their “www.[insertwebsite].com” and their “American Online Keyword”. lol…good old days… :P

But I do use AIM, so I guess they still have something.

Good question. I’ve wondered myself, sometimes.

@DominicX

“AOL Keyword: Cartoon Network” was something I definitely heard like everyday after school.

The bastards destroyed Compuserv, which was a very good ISP when AOL devoured them. They can rot in hell. I really should cancel my account, but I’ve had that cs.com email address forever and I would have to notify a hundred vendors and twice as many people….......hey, guys…..I just had a deja vu experience on this response…really….maybe it is time to do it….or, then again…..who has the pipe….pass it back this way
See ya…..Gary/wtf

Fear. AOL is the world’s largest private network. Anything going in or out is routed through a proxy server. People like that. I think the sense of security is false, but people have the perception that so long as they access the Internet through AOL, they are completely safe from malware and kiddie porn.

It’s also been my experience that the average AOL user doesn’t know how to do much more than turn his computer on. Try talking one of them through a control panel applet some time. Most of them don’t even know it exists.

AOL actually owns quite a few valuable web sites on the internet that generate a large amount fo web revenue. Some of the hot properties they own include engadget.com, autoblog.com, tmz.com, as many other blogs. I think they are under the “Weblogs Inc.” network.

they have moved beyond dial-up quite some time ago. Yes they are a much smaller company, but still relevant, at least in the short term