[vel0city]

Yeah and back in those times where you hopped on your phone line to dial to your ISPs modem to access the services they host I'd completely agree they were information services providers which happened to maybe offer this new fangled "web" thing you might have heard of on the news. People signed up for those ISPs because of the information services the ISPs provided.

Now people sign up for their ISPs because they offered the better price/throughput/stability math, or often they were the only one reasonably available. Practically nobody signs up because one provider has better email or better newsgroups.