I have never been a fan of AOL and have always given friends of mine the dickens when I find out there using AOL. I think AOL success in the past was based upon consumers not having a clue and AOL making it easy for users to get on the net. The majority of consumers where happy to stick a CD in there PC let it assimilate it and then double click and they where on AOL's version of the Internet.

An additional friend of mine had a substantial amount of stock in the company he was convinced at the time he had a long time winner. We talked about it quite a bit but he was blinded by AOL's smoke and mirrors. He has never told me if he dumped the stock or not but looking at the numbers I hope he did. [Cnet]