AOL was an ISP. It was easy to copy and improve on AOL's early business model and ISPs become a community in a very short time. Even today, no one wants to become a "dump pipe," just look at how the cable companies and cellular networks try to protect their turf with long term contracts and bundling their data service with something else (TV, movie, phone, etc.) AOL didn't know how to evolve, AOL died.
Google is an advertiser/data miner. It is very hard to copy or capture Google's data. Google's business model is secure because of extreme high cost to enter the market. The only thing Google has to worry about is users giving their data to someone else. That is why they made Android and Chrome; prevents MS and Yahoo from gathering user data. Facebook, not Apple, is the only real threat to Google.
If memory serves me right, didn't the early versions of AOL work a similar way as the Chrome browser? A user types in a keyword into the AOL broswer and AOL matched the keyword with a URL, website pops up. A user types a keyword in Chrome and Chrome searches your history or uses Google's search engine to match the keyword with a URL, website pops up. I know you can change the search engines in Chrome but the end result is the same; the user doesn't have to know how the Internet works to use the Internet.
History repeats itself.
Living on Earth may be expensive, but it includes an annual free trip around the Sun.