Her stated reason was that the hourly price was unfair. This suggests that it was a couple dollars an hour:<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;ask.metafilter.com&#x2F;101477&#x2F;Cost-of-the-intertubes-a-decade-ago#1473308" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;ask.metafilter.com&#x2F;101477&#x2F;Cost-of-the-intertubes-a-de...</a><p>So we have an anecdote about marginal pricing going from $1 or $2 (or more) to $0 being used as an illustration that people don&#x27;t like metering.<p>If AOL had costs of $0.20 an hour, her perception that their pricing was a ripoff probably wasn&#x27;t ridiculous.<p>(I&#x27;m not trying to refute you, I was making the perhaps not very useful argument that the anecdote was not a good illustration, because it left too many loose ends. It&#x27;s compelling because AOL is famous and her behavior is easy to cast as ridiculous, but it wouldn&#x27;t be real surprising if it was told in a way that was useful to AOL.)