Without AOL millions of people would have either never got on the Internet, or would have done so much later. Without the critical mass that the Internet gained, Microsoft’s attempt to be the central hub for all network connections might have succeeded.

AOL basically was a retailer of Internet connections. they used Internet protocols but put a friendly face on them long before anyone else had.

Back when I only had dial-up I would have been fine using AOL if I had known that it was possible (if it was) to break out of thier interface and use then standard Internet tools, like FTP, Gopher, NNTP, etc.

Instead I opted for a primitive (and cheaper) service called Digex that was being run out of someones basement.

Digex went on to become a big company too, but never close to AOL in popularity.

Many problems can be solved on user’s computers today by figuring out the TCP/IP settings for the ISP and simply setting those up using the (now standard) OS capabilities and skiping the “installation disk” from the ISP which comes with more things you don’t want than things you do.

My guess is that if AOL, Google, or somebody else doesn’t figure out how to make a unified customer base out of the hundreds (guesstimate) of small local ISPs around the country then the local phone companies will, possibly as a way to salvage the one remaining reason to have an ordinary wired phone.