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I had the exact same reaction to reading those lines. Everyone I knew was more than happy to use AOL to surf the World Wide Web it was only when their cost and speed stagnated next to competitors did people jump ship.

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AOL thought they were an ISP, when really they were a media and community company. I was a kid in the 90s, and my friends' parents didn't want them on the broader internet. AOL was considered safe. While they should have leaned into that, they also had an uphill battle - people now paid their cable companies for internet access, and didn't want to pay AOL's (high) prices for access to content.

> Everyone I knew was more than happy to use AOL to surf the World Wide Web

Which was a service AOL didn't really provide at first. Only when it became a kind of ISP.

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