I remember that as well. I thought that _was_ the internet since that was my first real exposure to home internet. Outside of that it was just my elementary school and the library. When services like NetZero and Juno came out, my mind was blown knowing that I didn't need to have the entire AOL ecosystem load up -- which could take a while with a 14.4k modem and a 133MHz(?) Pentium with 32MB RAM.

I rememebr this era too.

I once showed this off to a friend by minimizing the AOL window, opening a folder, and typing some domain into the location bar. Back then IE was intermingled with explorer enough that this opened the website inside the folder window! Thus proving the internet existed outside of AOL!

We also had similar discoveries of editing the HTML of the folder itself before discovering .html files for making websites.

Then again when we discovered how to make content go into horizontal columns with this magic called <table> and <td> ! The magic!

I recall using this method to bypass the strict filtering of my child-level AOL account. I could browse chat rooms and play games on websites I couldn’t access in the AOL browser via IE. Good times!

Are you me? This was my exact experience back in the early 2000s when AOL expanded to Germany.

I was the exact same. My mind was blown when I realized you could connect to AOL and THEN open an internet browser and just be ONLINE! I spent way to long thinking AOL was the internet before I think I saw my cousin do this and it changed my world forever.

I think I know...

AOL did keep state locally. There was caching. To not only keep the content fresh, additional minutes would be used getting back to the previous state and wallah .... more minutes used.

When was that? I briefly used AOL as a dial-up service in the UK circa 2000 because of the toll-free number and penny a minute billing and don’t recall this.

This was probably 1999 and before, and in the US. It was maddening, especially when one's parents might pick up the phone and kill the connection.

Once I figured out being online for more than 15 mins at a time was preferable I got a dedicated phone line around the same time in late 98.

From what I’ve seen and read, AOL in the UK was a very different beast to AOL in the US.

I've just been trying to jog my memory of it and it's difficult to find the relevant information among the masses of information about US AOL.

Growing up, I had a best friend (still a good friend though we live very far apart now) his dad used AOL on top of his broadband through the 2000's...I moved away maybe 2006 but couldn't figure out why said dad was waiting for that little yellow running man to get to the right pane