Search Engine Enlightenment

AOL Reinvents Itself as... a Portal

Speaking of the portal wars raging hard, AOL is now trying to become a portal again. In case you're interested, here's a brief and very rough timeline of AOL:

• 1990ish - AOL is an online service with subscriber-only content; subscriber rate increases at rapid rate as online content is relatively scarce.
  
• 1998ish - AOL launches a "me-too" portal with ad supported model; subscriber growth continues despite cracks in AOL's facade
  
• 2002ish - AOL sheds online portal in favor of content exclusive to paid subscribers; subscriber growth goes negative as users drop dial-up in favor of broadband.
  
• 2004 - AOL becomes portal again to try to reverse bleeding of paid subscribers, thanks to re-emergence of online advertising largely due to pay-per-click search ads.

So there you have it. I don't know about you, but I can't wait to try My AOL (again). I never got a chance to say goodbye the first time... *sniff*

Posted by Cory Kleinschmidt
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