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Even if those rumors are true (and no one has ever seen fit to publish them, so there's that) it wasn't just a single executive that killed AIM, it was multiple
by polynomial 6y ago
Even if those rumors are true (and no one has ever seen fit to publish them, so there's that) it wasn't just a single executive that killed AIM, it was multiple points of failure, including keeping it ad-free, which meant it pretty much existed outside AOL's revenue ecosystem, out on its own. And when Appelman & team released their open source version, that was akin to declaring a mutiny at anti-OSS AOL.
Products need internal champions, without which, it doesn't take a conspiracy to kill them, they will just atrophy on their own.
- jaywalk 6y agoIt's obviously been a long time so my memory could be faulty, but I distinctly remember ads in AIM and installing cracked versions of the client that removed the ads.
- Macha 6y agoYeah, in the last few years there was a big permanent ad at the footer of the contact list, plenty of ads in the web client and I think at one point there were sidebar ads in chat (that last one could have been msn)
- polynomial 6y agoJTBC, I meant revenue generating ads, not ads for other AOL products.
- Macha 6y agoMaybe they had no inventory in your region, or you're remembering an earlier time? It definitely had auctioned ads in 2014.