AOL executives made the analogy that its flagship service resembled USA Today, while CompuServe was more like the New York Times . Today, CompuServe might be described as the Main Street Gazette.
Deals offering free PCs often require consumers to subscribe to an online service for three years.
So it enlisted CompuServe, whose subscriber base had languished since AOL acquired it about two years earlier. Adjusting to new forms of competition is nothing new to AOL, which has managed to dominate the ISP market with a subscriber list that totals 18 million at last count. But the prospect of free PCs or Net access has complicated the marketplace more than ever before. Already, Microsoft's MSN has introduced a low-cost Internet access deal available to customers of warehouse retailer Costco. In addition, computer manufacturers such as Dell and Gateway have begun bundling Internet access with their systems.