Market rebranding, walk with me.

... smells just as sweet as it were.

Maybe ten years ago after using one too many of their free 30 day trial CDs they so freely circulated, I was banned for life. The AOL help desk young lady was actually stunned and kept saying, "You've been banned" over and over. One of the happiest days of my life...I was banned by AOL.

Aol and SyFy must have the same lame and incompetent ad firm. There's just no way SyFy is anything other than netspeak for Syphilis and I have yet to cypher what Aol is. Redneck speak for a winged nocturnal rat eating bird maybe.

Don't mean to disparage all the good, honest rednecks out there since IR12.

Nick, it's really not that interesting reading a full page of you making fun of AOL. You could have told us what AOL does these days... I'm sure it's evolved a bit since dial up modems and free CDs. Notice the AOL logo (the old one apparently) at the top of engadget's homepage, for example. I wonder what that's all about?

Aol, i presume becomes Owl?

I agree to move forward they need to change thier strategy, and they need to improve their service. I work in IT so the first thing they need to do is create a service that I can say i wouldn't mind using. Currently when people tell me they have problems using the system at home, if ask what service provider they are using, if they say AOL my responce will always be the same "What really? what were you thinking/smoking at the time or what deluded fool advised that".

Untill that changes they are doomed.

they are always doomed to fail unless they stop patronising people and also stop the bloatware and also stop the hidden charges for their services...

the list is long but can be summarised by:
change your strategy to an honest outlook rather than a predatory one!