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AOL is a dinosaur for sure, but some old dinosaur customers who are older still prefer that kind of service. Some dinosaur customers don't take well to change I guess.
When AOL came along the internet was still fairly new. Most people in those days still didn't even have email addresses, and they didn't understand the internet or how to navigate it. They also didn't understand modems and how the technology worked. Along came AOL who basically held their hands and brought them into the internet, albeit through a highly scaled back and highly restricted access to same. People could signup, by a modem, get their geeky child/friend/neighbor to hook it up to their computer, and get on the internet and discover email, instant messaging, and the world of surfing the web, even though they didn't have much clue about any of that.
In those days AOL was huge, so big that it eventually took over Time Warner. Fast forward a few years and people had mostly learned what they needed to know to access the full and unfiltered internet via much better services. Many cable companies began offering internet services and the prices went down. AOL became the dinosaur it now is and started bleeding out customers. Time Warner pushed the AOL directors to the curb and regained control of their company.
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