AOL had its uses, many moons ago.
I joined AOL when they only had users in the five digits. It was Version 1.0, and it came on one floppy, and you had to order it through the mail (I've kept that diskette in my desk just for old times' sake).
That was back when AOL charged per-minute for the connection. I had AOL bills in excess of $300 for some months, but I paid it gladly.
In those days, it was a far superior alternative to the BBS's that I had grown addicted to (anybody out there remember Eskimo North? I was a regular there for a long time). It wasn't connected to the WWW, because it didn't exist. The Internet was still merely a project that only the military and universities were connected to. I joined AOL because it was better than Compuserve (had an account there, too).
I was there when AOL later announced that their email system was now connected to this new "Internet" thingy and we could use our username with "@aol.com" to send and receive Internet mail.
I met three different girlfriends in AOL Christian Chat rooms, and I still correspond with two of them even now as good friends. It was a great time. AOL filled a need and did it better than anyone else (compuserve, prodigy...).
AOL has struggled for a long time to remain relevant in the age of www. The truth is, sadly, they offer services that are now better done by others. They had a pretty good global ISP thing going on, but they still try to be a content provider when they would be better if they just settled on being a global ISP. Nobody wants to pay for content, but people will pay for service, capacity and access). Like many things, they were good at what they did in the old days, but their time has passed.
I finally cancelled my AOL account just last year. But it was a moment of mixed feelings.