AOL, It’s Been a Painful 20 Years

PC World has taken a look back over the last 20 years of AOL:

As the 1990s progressed, the company lived up to the promise of its new moniker, doing more than any other to introduce the country to the online world. As the Internet took off, it served as the most important on-ramp to what was often called the Information Highway. And although today’s AOL is no longer the country’s dominant ISP, its services and sites add up to the fourth most popular property on the Web, from instant-messaging kingpin AIM to muckraker TMZ.com to video engine Truveo.

Outside of poor business decisions, my biggest problem with AOL has always been the fact that they offered a limited view of the Internet. In other words, the Internet service providers were also playing the role of content providers.

And rightfully so. Up until 1998’s Digital Millennium Copyright Act, ISPs could be held responsible for anything their subscribers did while on their network – including criminal activity like fraud or child pornography. Thus, by limiting what their users could do, ISPs like AOL and others could protect themselves.

Sadly, AOL didn’t really become more transparent – like many ISPs did – after the DMCA. And I add would add that to PC World’s List. ISPs should not be in the business of shaping what their users see and use on the Internet.