[guessbest]

It wasn't really a walled garden, though. I remember using the AOL client software to connect to the internet and then opening IE to browse internet sites like yahoo, geocities and slashdot. When the computer owner who let me borrow his computer saw me do this he was stunned. He didn't realize he was connected to the internet this whole time.

[tablespoon]

> It wasn't really a walled garden, though. I remember using the AOL client software to connect to the internet and then opening IE to browse internet sites like yahoo, geocities and slashdot.

That wasn't always true. At some point internet access was a "feature" that was added to the walled-garden AOL. They famously added Usenet in September 1993. I can't find a date for web access, but I'd guess 1995.

[tmm84]

I remember the usenet and gopher features that were part of the AOL client. I remember the hype I had heard as a kid on AOL back in those days. When I found them and tried to use them (I was about 12 years old) I didn't find them very helpful or easy to use like the main forms in AOL but after a few years after leaving AOL I got way more out of IRC and usenet than I had in my time there. What AOL did for me at that time was present an internet that was good enough because it was easy enough to use.

[unixhero]

Eternal September, aaahhh

[analog31]

I certainly remember the culture clash when AOL opened the Internet to "newbies," starting with Usenet and then everything else. I think part of it was just that being able to connect no longer made you part of a special club.

I was one of those newbies. When my spouse and I were living in different towns after grad school, AOL allowed us to communicate using local phone numbers in our respective locations, using a single account. Later on, they reconfigured their software so that it was running on top of a regular TCP/IP client, and you'd use it by logging in with the AOL software and then switching over to Netscape and an e-mail program that recognized AOL's protocol.

I ran my first side business from an AOL e-mail address.

AOL was the closest thing to "it just works" in the business for quite a while. Plus, their nationwide reach meant that you could access it anywhere without paying for long distance phone service. It took a few more years for the Internet to work that well for everybody.

I predicted to my friends that pretty soon everybody would have access to the Internet! Today we look back on the early Internet with nostalgia.

Eternal September... yeah, bring it on.

[myself248]

It was for a long time. At some point which I believe was 1994, AOL made a Winsock.DLL available, which could route TCP/IP packets over your AOLnet connection, and present itself as a standard winsock interface. This allowed any other Winsock program (Netscape, IE, Forte Agent, FTP, etc) to run while dialed into AOL.

Prior to that, no, you couldn't do that. Being dialed into AOL meant you were only connected to AOL. The email did have an internet gateway (since 1992), you could email people at other internet hosts, but you couldn't use regular internet software until that DLL came out.

[nirav72]

Around 1995, AOL client itself could use winsock and work over tcp. So you could dial into your local ISP , select Winsock or tcp or some option like that on the main login page and be in AOL, while still have the ability to launch other apps like Netscape or irc client. You didn't have to dial into AOL's number. I use to use AOL on the school network to chat with family or friends that hadn't discovered the wider internet yet.

[zemo]

right but that wasn't what AOL was trying to build; it's what happened in spite of their efforts, not because of them. Notice the prominent "channels" and "what's hot" buttons in the second screen shot? They're given a higher position in the ui hierarchy than "internet" for a reason. They were trying to create an experience where all of the content came from AOL itself. "Channels" were their content pipelines, they were hypermedia but everything within the content network of channels was created by AOL itself. It would be like someone hearing about the web and thinking that the way to "win" the web would be to "own all of the web pages".

[TedDoesntTalk]

> It wasn't really a walled garden, though

It effectively was for millions of users who did not venture outside the AOL client.

[hydr0]

fwiw...AOL also introduced a web browser within their client and provided its users with 2mb of web hosting space. I hosted a bunch of my first web sites using it and learned about FTP.

[TedDoesntTalk]

That’s a great story to hear and lessons my negative views of AOL. Thanks for sharing it!