AOL and similar services connected to the internet but were separate from it. They predated wide availability of consumer internet service. There's not much of a parallel to what the author is discussing.
I don't think this bit really requires much conversation, you can just read the relevant wikipedia pages for a quick rundown on things like the history of AOL, the internet, the world wide web and the seemingly nonsensical but curiously real distinctions between them over the years. What if you did that?
