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I always figured it was because "AOL is so easy to use, no wonder it's #1!" The simplicity of it means that the subscribers don't have to learn how to do things outside the realm of AOL unless they want to. When I first got my computer, I was on my college's LAN, so I had to figure out how to set everything up for myself... and I knew almost nothing about computers at that time. If I'd signed up for AOL, I wouldn't have had to figure anything out, because it's all right there. I now know more about computers (and how to set stuff up... and then fix the stuff that I messed up trying to set it up the first time) than a lot of people who've been using computers for years longer than me... I figure it's because I had to figure everything out for myself, because I couldn't afford to keep paying other people to fix my mistakes. On a side note... I DID take the free trial AOL offered, about a year after I first got the computer, and I absolutely hated it... I didn't like having everything spoon-fed to me. I'm not trying to put down people who use AOL, I think it's just a matter of personal preference, and how easy you want things to be for you.... in my experience, a lot of AOL users don't know how to do much outside of AOL. (Disclaimers being "in my experience", and "a lot of" as opposed to "all").