Just five years ago AOL was still the nation's largest ISP. However, the company exited the ISP business, failed in attempts to migrate those users to broadband, then lost them all as the company shifted focus toward being a marginally-interesting content and advertising farm. Amazingly, it was recently observed that AOL still has 3.5 million subscribers, though it's not clear how many of those are people too lazy to check their credit card bills for canceled services.
Indeed, Local news outlets in Arizona have noticed that there's still a significant number of people also paying AOL for e-mail -- something AOL has offered for free since 2006 when AOL was still the nation's largest ISP with 18.6 million users:
Although Casale upgraded from dial-up to high speed, she just now realized that she has still been paying AOL $14.95 a month for email -- a service that's been free since 2006. "One day I just looked at, you know, you're going through your bills and every bit helps right now and I'm like, Why am I paying for email? No one else is,'" she said.
Of that 3.5 million you do start to wonder how many actually know they're still an AOL subscriber. AOL's cancellation systems were notoriously obnoxious, leading you to wonder how many of those are dead grandparents, with families being continually billed for services never used?read comment(s)