I'm from Australia and free AOL CD's were everywhere by the late 90's, but I knew absolutely zero people that had ever used it.

Likewise, everyone was familiar with the 'Prodigy' and 'CompuServe' icons on our desktops with earlier versions of Windows, but nobody used them.

Correction: Free AOL disks felt very pervasive here.

Future archaeologists are going to be sifting through the landfills and determine that AOL discs are going to either be some sort of currency or curious religious artifacts.

I was on AOL for a big stretch of that time, and those archaeologists wouldn’t be wrong. It was so pervasive that it was a thing of wonder and majesty on the actual www (eg the classic viral Web 1.0 post about getting a license plate starting with ASL).

I almost remember the exact moment I realised that AOL in fact wasn't the internet but rather some shovelware that sat above it. As soon as I got winsock working I never went back.

Well, yeah you make a fair point there. I can't speak to who used them but it at least felt like free AOL and Compuserve hours were in heavy use. Might just have been in my tiny sphere though.

Yes, they were everywhere including cereal boxex. But who didn't repurpose these free 3.5" floppy disks to store their stuff back in the day anyway?

Free AOL disks were everywhere in France too.

Especially in my uncle’s cherry trees to scare the birds.