The article missed discussing in detail how AOL Keywords and their walled garden of apparent “websites” was huge. So many major companies had pages on AOL and for many, that was the internet.

The story of them losing a grip over the power of keywords to true websites was almost the final blow in transitioning AOL from an internet unto its own, to yet another ISP that had little to differentiate itself from others except price (especially as their all in one chat, email, browsing client aged horribly as countless other upstarts brought efficient and feature-rich clients to market).