Prodigy

Prodigy launched widely in 1988 with something nobody else had: colour graphics instead of plain text, drawn with the NAPLPS standard. The business idea was e-commerce and advertising, with a flat monthly fee rather than hourly billing. An advertisement sat permanently along the bottom of the screen, making the service an early ancestor of the banner-ad web.

Users mostly wanted the bulletin boards and email, which were the most expensive parts to run. When Prodigy introduced a per-message charge above thirty a month in 1990, protest groups formed and were shut down — one of the first fights over free speech on a private platform. AOL overtook it, and Prodigy eventually became an ordinary internet provider.