

Dial-up is still the main revenue source for AOL - indiekid
http://cir.ca/story/dial-up-still-thrives-at-aol

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jlogsdon
Headline, and article, is sensationalist.

The article states "that its Membership Group — the division that includes its
dial-up Internet business — still generates most of the company's revenue".

According to the Yahoo! report[1] it includes _every_ membership service (such
as Mail):

"The Membership Group, which consists of offerings that serve AOL’s registered
account holders, both free and paid, and are focused on delivering world-class
experiences to AOL’s loyal users who rely on these AOL products and properties
every day. The results for this segment include AOL’s subscription offerings
and advertising offerings on Membership Group properties, such as AOL Mail, as
well as from performance compensation for marketing third party products and
services."

[1] [http://finance.yahoo.com/news/aol-reports-revenue-growth-
fir...](http://finance.yahoo.com/news/aol-reports-revenue-growth-
first-120000822.html)

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enuncajon
I do not find this surprising at all. I realize it is not dial-up, but my in-
laws who pay >$70/month for high-speed broadband are still convinced that AOL
is the only route to the "Internet". I cannot convince them otherwise.

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n72
I wondering how much of this is comprised of auto-renewed subscriptions that
people don't even realize they're paying for.

~~~
bunderbunder
Or people who have broadband, but keep paying for AOL's dialup service because
they don't realize they think they need to in order to keep their AOL email
and instant messaging accounts.

That said, I'd like to have a closer look at the numbers before jumping to any
conclusions. Nowadays the situation might be complicated a bit by the fact
that AOL bundles "backup dial-up" service in with their packages of paid
services that are primarily intended for broadband users.

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yuhong
[https://www.quora.com/AOL/Did-AOL-make-it-hard-to-cancel-
in-...](https://www.quora.com/AOL/Did-AOL-make-it-hard-to-cancel-in-order-to-
keep-customers)

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nullvoyd
This website messes with my back button. Nobody messes with my back button.
Also, terrible design.

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jiggy2011
Wow, outside of a very small handful of sites is the web still usable on dial
up?

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chc
If you have an iPhone, switch to EDGE for something roughly approximating the
dialup experience. (I think it's a bit faster, but they're in the same
ballpark.)

~~~
plorkyeran
EDGE tops out at over four times the speed of dialup, amazingly enough.

~~~
chc
But AFAIK EDGE almost never gets anywhere close to its theoretical speed limit
while 56k modems are usually very close, so in practice EDGE might be
something like 50-100% faster.

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OGinparadise
They had a 10 year or so golden opportunity to pivot and try different models
backed by dial-up revenue.

I'd say that they failed

~~~
DavidBradbury
Oddly enough, they're still a company worth roughly $2.17 billion. I'd
certainly be happy with that failure.

~~~
OGinparadise
Me too--even with 170K at this point in my life, but let's look at where AOL
was and the chances they had.

