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paxys3y ago· 2 in thread

AOL was already dominant by the time MSN launched. Yahoo was close behind. Even back then Microsoft was playing catch up in the space.

dragonwriter3y ago

> AOL was already dominant by the time MSN launched.

And never got off the pre-web walled garden end-to-end business model, despite connecting to the web, and died because of it. Not exactly the best example to use to argue Microsoft missed the boat on Web-era online services.

paxys3y ago

AOL dominated, then Yahoo dominated, then Google dominated, then Google and Facebook dominated. Microsoft was just never in the picture.

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lallysingh3y ago· 2 in thread

And it was half assed filler bullshit.

tripleo13y ago

Yeah, AOL was great.

lallysingh3y ago

Why would AOL be the standard here?

dragonwriter3y ago

> They had a presence in online services, MSN is older than even IE.

No, it isn’t. IE, Microsoft Internet Start (Microsoft’s original web portal), and MSN (originally a separate subscription-based dialup online service that later merged with the main portal) all launched simultaneously in August 1995.

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