Where prodigy failed was not pivoting from its walled garden custom binary app of content to a general purpose dialup ISP. By the time they thought to to do it,

Where prodigy failed was not pivoting from its walled garden custom binary app of content to a general purpose dialup ISP. By the time they thought to to do it, it was late 1996 or early 97 and plenty of other generalists were in the market (netcom, mind spring, etc) Who knows what might have happened if they'd brought all of sears products online for purchase, in their existing standalone prodigy browser software...