They were too far ahead of time with their Prodigy investment. Before the internet took off, all the big online players were walled gardens. AOL users couldn’t reach Prodigy users, who couldn’t reach CompuServe users, who couldn’t reach GEnie users, who couldn’t reach MSN users, and so on. They didn’t expect the internet to come along and eat Prodigy’s lunch, and they may have underestimated the internet’s potential given that there was a large crowd who never saw Sears’ first online presence.
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