What was the name of the once-ubiquitous 1990s internet service that mailed free trial CDs to practically every household in America?
AOL
The answer was AOL. Here's the why, the decoys, and the source trail.
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America Online (AOL) became synonymous with early internet access in the 1990s, famously flooding mailboxes with billions of free trial discs. At its peak in 2002, AOL had over 26 million subscribers in the United States alone.
A good trivia question makes the wrong answers feel close. Here is the clean read on the set.
- CompuServe - a decoy; it may live near the same topic, but it does not answer this exact clue.
- Prodigy - a decoy; it may live near the same topic, but it does not answer this exact clue.
- AOL - correct answer.
- NetZero - a decoy; it may live near the same topic, but it does not answer this exact clue.
AOL is the one to remember. America Online (AOL) became synonymous with early internet access in the 1990s, famously flooding mailboxes with billions of free trial discs. AOL's former chief marketing officer estimated the company produced over 50% of all CDs manufactured worldwide during the height of the disc campaign in the late 1990s.
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Sources: Wikipedia — AOL