Unless you pay attention to quarterly earnings reports of one-time tech titans, you probably missed the news last week that AOL beat Wall Street expectations in the most recent quarter, and is (more or less) profitable. And not just AOL — a company that also owns The Huffington Post, TechCrunch, and Moviefone — but AOL's subscription service. In the last quarter, 2.34 million people subscribed to AOL.
The tech world found that amusing — and in a way, it is. It means 2.34 million people in the United States pay for unlimited dial-up internet. But Walt Hickey at FiveThirtyEight didn't only laugh — he also decided to go look at what else AOL offers its subscribers. Read his post for all the terrific details, but let's focus just on the basic plan, which costs all of $4.99 a month (or $59.88 a year, Hickey notes — roughly the monthly fee for broadband internet).
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