Now that AOL is once again on their own, and investors have lost $100 Billion in stock value, one has to ask the question. Does anyone still use AOL? One may recall that once upon a time AOL had over 30 million subscribers. You may also recall that almost on a daily bases, one would open their mailboxes and find a free AOL disk awaiting you. It almost became a joke and people were coming up with novel ways to use the disks.

I remember using the AOL disks for keeping animals away from my tomato plants. They were also useful for keeping birds away as well as one of my neighbors had pointed out. I never actually gave any thought to using AOL even when it was at their height of strength, holding captive 30 million customers. I use the term captive because there were horror stories floating around that people were having trouble terminating their AOL service.

To add to their problems those AOL disks presented another issue. Once the software was installed on a Windows computer system, people had issues when they tried using another ISP. It seemed that AOL had a strangle hold on the computer and the computer would require an exorcism to get AOL uninstalled.

So now that AOL is once again on their own, will the company be able to attract users to their services? Will their past misgivings keep AOL in the dark ages and prevent the company which pioneered the ‘you got mail’ message from being a real contender?

I believe it will. The only thing missing from AOL is a eulogy.

Comments welcome.

Gory AOL details are here.