Tuesday, March 29, 2005
AOL
Internet access has, in the ultraconnected world of the 21st century, become a necessity on par with electricity and running water. There are literally hundreds of ISPs out there, but for some reason an overwhelming percentage of prospective customers choose America Online over more qualified candidates.
Why? AOL is a scam that preys on the elderly and the uninformed. AOL achieves an extremely high degree of name recognition by clogging the postal system with millions of its CDs. If you have a mailing address, you've doubtlessly received dozens of the things. So when people (especially old people, who are for the most part completely clueless when it comes to computers) sign up for internet service, they flock to AOL because it's a name that's well-known and, they assume, respected.
So what makes AOL a scam apart from the success they have in selling their so-called product? AOL users are willing to cough up $23.95 each and every month because they think AOL offers more and more user-friendly services than other ISPs (if they think at all, which is unlikely).
So does AOL really offer more services for the money? Let's take a look.
Internet access: The $23.95 monthly charge is for standard 56K internet. Rates of ten dollars a month and below are easy to find elsewhere.
Email: AOL's monthly fee gets you a paltry 100 megs of email storage. With a Gmail account you get 1000 megs, and Yahoo and even Hotmail, the absolute bottom of the barrel for webmail service, give you 250. How much do these cost? Absolutely nothing.
Instant messenger: This is somehow a selling point even though you can get it separately for free.
Radio: Everyone likes listening to music, but if you think you have to pay to do it, you're wrong. You can get the same service from Yahoo for free.
Personalization: That's nice. While you're getting ripped off, you can turn your start page different colors. Whoopee.
Clearly, AOL offers nothing that justifies the exorbitant fee, and this is for dialup. It would be easier to forgive this obvious ripoff if AOL was at least more user-friendly than the competition, but it's not. User-friendliness is a myth formulated by AOL to lure in unsuspecting, computerphobic senior citizens. Even simple tasks are excruciatingly complicated, and anything more involved than sending email is a nightmare. AOL is not friendly in any way, least of all to your bank account.
If you're reading this right now, then either you're using AOL or some other ISP. If you're using AOL, do yourself and the world a favor by cancelling your subscription so you can enjoy the satisfaction of supporting one fewer megacorporation this month.
Why? AOL is a scam that preys on the elderly and the uninformed. AOL achieves an extremely high degree of name recognition by clogging the postal system with millions of its CDs. If you have a mailing address, you've doubtlessly received dozens of the things. So when people (especially old people, who are for the most part completely clueless when it comes to computers) sign up for internet service, they flock to AOL because it's a name that's well-known and, they assume, respected.
So what makes AOL a scam apart from the success they have in selling their so-called product? AOL users are willing to cough up $23.95 each and every month because they think AOL offers more and more user-friendly services than other ISPs (if they think at all, which is unlikely).
So does AOL really offer more services for the money? Let's take a look.
Internet access: The $23.95 monthly charge is for standard 56K internet. Rates of ten dollars a month and below are easy to find elsewhere.
Email: AOL's monthly fee gets you a paltry 100 megs of email storage. With a Gmail account you get 1000 megs, and Yahoo and even Hotmail, the absolute bottom of the barrel for webmail service, give you 250. How much do these cost? Absolutely nothing.
Instant messenger: This is somehow a selling point even though you can get it separately for free.
Radio: Everyone likes listening to music, but if you think you have to pay to do it, you're wrong. You can get the same service from Yahoo for free.
Personalization: That's nice. While you're getting ripped off, you can turn your start page different colors. Whoopee.
Clearly, AOL offers nothing that justifies the exorbitant fee, and this is for dialup. It would be easier to forgive this obvious ripoff if AOL was at least more user-friendly than the competition, but it's not. User-friendliness is a myth formulated by AOL to lure in unsuspecting, computerphobic senior citizens. Even simple tasks are excruciatingly complicated, and anything more involved than sending email is a nightmare. AOL is not friendly in any way, least of all to your bank account.
If you're reading this right now, then either you're using AOL or some other ISP. If you're using AOL, do yourself and the world a favor by cancelling your subscription so you can enjoy the satisfaction of supporting one fewer megacorporation this month.
# posted by Ben @ 6:10 PM 
