In the ‘90s, America Online helped carry the masses into a burgeoning digital utopia known as cyberspace.
In 2025, AOL is somehow still around — even as it’s been completely outclassed by modern web browsers and email providers.
But how… and why?
YouTuber Michael MJD recently provided a tour of what AOL’s desktop web browser looks like in 2025:
- Called AOL Desktop Gold (ooh la la), it costs $7 a month.
- That’s for security-focused desktop clients, not for dial-up internet.
- It’s full of retro aesthetics, including old AOL icons and iconic sound clips, like “You’ve got mail.”
- It’s also full of ads, because even the Old Internet can’t escape the New Internet.
The target audience seems to be people who learned how to use the internet with AOL in the ‘90s or early 2000s and refuse to adapt.
How many of those people are there?
AOL had 18m+ subscribers in 1999.
The company was once the nation’s biggest internet provider, but as broadband internet (and free browsers) replaced dial-up, AOL was left in the past.
- In 2015, 2.1m people were still paying for AOL’s dial-up internet.
- By 2021, that number reportedly fell to the “low thousands,” but 1.5m users were still paying for AOL services.
AOL email addresses have been free since 2004, but even without the barrier, it still pales in comparison to Gmail — the Coca-Cola, the McDonald’s, and the Ford F-150 of email — which boasts 1.8B+ users.
And yet, AOL Desktop Gold still gets regular updates, so there is an audience there. Who knows, maybe having an AOL email address will soon become a status symbol? (It won’t.)
