AOL wasn't a "portal." It was the whole site. Companies advertised "AOL keywords" instead of domain names, and the content on AOL was specific to AOL. AOL didn'

AOL wasn't a "portal." It was the whole site. Companies advertised "AOL keywords" instead of domain names, and the content on AOL was specific to AOL. AOL didn't become what you'd think of as an ISP until later. You could think of it more like a really big BBS that charged hourly.