On Mon, 29 Jun 1998, John Foust wrote:
At 05:15 PM 6/29/98 -0700, Sam Ismail wrote:
> Didn't AOL get its start by being bundled with PC-GEOS?
As far as I know, AOL used to be called AppleLink, which was an Apple
online service.
I don't remember if it mutated into AOL, but there once was a
service called QuantumLink that sold branded network services
such as AppleLink and AmigaLink and probably a few more "Links".
This just found in COMPUTE!'s Gazette magazine, March 1986, p.26:
"Several months ago Commodore agreed to lend exclusive marketing support
to a new online service, QuantumLink, which would be designed solely for
Commodore owners. This created a rather awkward situation when
Commodore's contract renegotiations with CompuServe came up last summer.
The two would, in effect, be competitors."
.
.
.
"Why a separate network for Commodore owners? The reason relates not
only to providing a machine-specific service, but to the continued health
of the whole industry, says Steve Case, Quantum's vice president of
marketing. 'In order to really expand the market for computers long term,
we had to create a dramatically increased utility because it seemed to a
lot of people that the computer penetration level has slowed down.
Somebody had to create a whole bunch of new ideas why people should buy
computers.'"
- John
Doug Spence
ds_spenc(a)alcor.concordia.ca
http://alcor.concordia.ca/~ds_spenc/
A good example of corporate cannibalism. The little fish (Q-Link-which
became AOL) swallows up the big fish (Compuserve). I've got several of
the Q-Link disks. Glad I didn't toss them. They wouldn't work of course
when I first tried them. It might be interesting to figure out what the
underlying com program was.
ciao larry
lwalker(a)interlog.com