20 Years of AOL Annoyances and Foul-Ups

[David Baxter]

Perhaps more of interest to those who lived through it than those who arrived on the tail end, this is a fascinating and sometimes frustrating look back on infamous moments in AOL history.

The one thing not mentioned in the article is AOL's link to the ironically self-titled Open Directory Project aka DMOZ, an once noble if hopelessly overoptimistic project whose recent history is as infamous as that of its owners.

20 Years of AOL Annoyances and Foul-Ups
by Harry McCracken, Technologizer, PCWorld
Apr 28, 2009

AOL floppies and CDs. Sharon Stone's fling with the Running Man icon. The death of Netscape. It's all part of AOL history we'd like to forget.

Read the PCWorld article here

[Steve]

Add to the sorrowful tale, AOL's takeover of the premier online forum service Compuserve, which it systematically demolished, then pasted the templates of the remaining struggling family and technical forums with sleazy sexually oriented ads and pop ups. The giant eventually renamed the service Netscape Forums, which is now a shadow of the former venerable Compuserve empire.

During this time, their installation discs intentionally modified Windows registry files to prevent any competitive online service's front end software to be installed.

As was reported in the article, they not only intentionally made it virtually impossible for subscribers to close their AOL accounts, but did the same to Compuserve customers. Customer service for existing customers was non existent.

Shame on AOL!