Good engineering quality can't save a business, but the reverse isn't true, we just usually don't attribute the failure directly to the software. Instead we would say things like "the company ran out of money" - even if the underlying reason is that engineering was expensive with low velocity. Or that a disruptive competitor brought the company down, even if this could have been prevented if the architecture had permitted eg. relatively easily updating to a more modern UI.
I wouldn't say it was a failure. They had a good run in a very quickly evolving time. That they got a slice of business for years during that period isn't bad!
When did they fail? They acquired Time Warner, creating a company that after continued consolidation is now ranked #13 on the Fortune 500 list.
AOL was an incredibly successful business. Nothing lasts forever.
The creative destruction of the business cycle grinds ever onward.
AOL was extremely successful in its day.
They had 40 million customers paying $20/month 30 years ago.
Orthogonal implies independence, not inverse correlation (which is what I'm guessing you meant).
I bet they meant what they wrote, since it makes more sense than what you're suggesting they meant.
Er, what? AOL was one of the most successful companies… ever. Things moved on, but this is like saying the roman empire was never successful.
AOL's primary business was dialup modems. Those died off after internet became ubiquitous.
They pre-dated Yahoo and Google as an index of the internet.