AOL was originally a closed bulletin-board system, unconnected to the Internet. They had chat rooms, games, and lots of other good stuff, and could charge quit

AOL was originally a closed bulletin-board system, unconnected to the Internet. They had chat rooms, games, and lots of other good stuff, and could charge quite a lot, especially because -- as the largest of a number of closed networks -- you could communicate with more people more easily there than you could on, say CompuServe. Then, as the Internet became more widely used, AOL had to connect to it, and increase their integration with it. Generally-accessible Internet services become more compelling for AOL users than the closed AOL services, so were less willing to pay a premium for AOL, decreasing their profits. Eventually people started seeing it as just another ISP, and their original value-add was eroded -- hence their decline. So yes, the Internet killed AOL. An open system where anyone could connect and start running any kind of service they liked killed a closed system where only the owner was allowed to say what people could do.