America Online right America Online, or AOL for short, is a corporate online service provider and internet service provider (ISP). AOL is owned by Time Warner, which uses the NYSE stock symbol "TWX". Today, America Online is perhaps best known for being an ISP. AOL's main competitor is Microsoft's MSN. Their US website is www.aol.com. AOL is based in Dulles, Virginia, and it has regional headquarters installations in many cities, including São Paulo, Shanghai, Sydney, Frankfurt, London, Toronto, Tokyo, Paris, and many others. History AOL got its start as a short-lived venture called Control Video, a company whose product was an online service called Gameline for the Atari 2600 video game console. Subscribers bought a modem from the company for $49.95 and paid a one-time $15 setup fee. Gameline permitted subscribers to temporarily download games and keep track of high scores, at a cost of approximately $1 an hour. In 1983 the company nearly went bankrupt, and a young marketing veteran named Steve Case ascended to the position of CEO. Case changed the company's strategy, and in 1985 launched a sort of mega-BBS for Commodore 64 and 128 computers, originally called Quantum Link ("Q-Link" for short). He also changed the name of the company to Quantum Computer Services. In October 1989, Quantum launched its AOL service for Apple II and Macintosh computers, and in February 1991 AOL for DOS was opened. In October 1991, Quantum changed its name to America Online. These changes began a trend of tremendous growth in the number of pay-based BBS services, like Prodigy and CompuServe, with whom AOL was competing. In the mid1990s, AOL was among the first companies to give customers not in academia or certain military installations access to the Internet, by allowing any subscriber to the AOL online service to connect to the Internet. At the same time, a small but exploding number of companies began offering access to an Internet connection from any home computer with a modem, without any online service. AOL had recently climbed past one million subscribers. It was very much the most recognizable name in online services, and its subscriber count dwarfed that of any of the newly-born ISPs. Although AOL was a minority of the total number of new users suddenly gaining access to the Internet, it was still the most well-known bloc of new users. As such, they were primarily associated with the influx of new users, usually unversed in netiquette, who came online in that period. When AOL announced its plans to provide its subscribers with Internet access, a great number of existing Internet users in the academic world so feared that the abrupt influx of untrained new users would disrupt civil and effective communications on the Internet that many of them began preaching anti-AOL rhetoric to their students and anyone else who would listen even before AOL had connected to the Internet. In the event, most AOL subscribers integrated into the virtual community of Internet users smoothly, probably because the netiquette idea was something they had already encountered on the online service they were accustomed to. The overall number of brand new Internet users was still huge, with or without the AOL subscribers, thanks to the burgeoning new ISPs as well the other two big online services (Prodigy and CompuServe) fairly closely following after AOL onto the Internet. If only a minority of the new users behaved in an ignorant manner on the Internet, that minority was still a very large number. AOL's name was the name most associated in the people's mind with all new users, both good and bad ones. As a result, since even slightly before AOL provided an Internet connection to its subscribers, it has been popular among many Internet users outside of AOL to view all AOL users with disdain and blame them as a group or even individually for every perceived bad attribute of having new users on the Internet. It is somewhat ironic that now many of those who look down on AOL users are in fact even less veteran on the Internet themselves, and that AOL makes significantly more effort to teach netiquette to new users than many of the competing ISPs that provide the connections for these users who style themselves as superior to AOL users. It is also ironic that so many of the unprovoked and vitriolic attacks flames written against AOL users are in themselves violations of the spirit and letter of netiquette. Despite these ironies, there remain a large number of persons using the Internet who adamantly promote the point of view that AOL users are somehow both inferior and a problem and many who will vigorously attempt to persuade people to abandon AOL for this reason alone, and switch to some other provider. AOL has long maintained a massive marketing push, mailing sign-up diskettes and CD-ROMs to over 100 million households, which fueled a massive growth and helped them dominate the online field. As a reaction of this, in August 2001 the campaign No More AOL CDs was started. Their goal is to collect one million unwanted CDs and give them back via a huge armada of trucks. An America Online spokesperson, who may have been missing the point of the campaign, pledged to send a large amount of AOL CD-ROMs to the campaign when they near the million mark. Others view AOL disks as valuable collectible items due to the vast number of CD-ROM design variations released by the company. In the late 1990s and into the early 2000s, AOL began purchasing and supporting many popular software projects and companies. Below are some of AOL's purchases: CompuServe NaviSoft's NaviServer (later to become AOLserver), purchased in 1994. Nullsoft (maker of Winamp), purchased in 1999 for $86 million Netscape ImagiNation Network (I.N.N.) from AT&T in 1996 Mirabilis (maker of ICQ) In 2000, AOL merged with Time Warner. See Time Warner for more information on the merger. In March 2004, with the merger widely regarded as having been an expensive failure for the new joint company, it was disclosed that Time Warner had held discussions with Microsoft concerning a possible takeover of the ailing AOL division. According to the New York Post, a possible deal would include Microsoft paying cash plus the assumption of debt to acquire AOL, as well as a possible investment by Microsoft in Time Warner Cable. Neither company has publicly confirmed the talks, but the newspaper reports that there are thought to be few obstacles in the way of a Microsoft takeover of AOL. (NY Post, March 19, 2004) Such articles, however, frequently pop up in the Media, with only intermittent veracity. Notable persons associated with AOL Jim Kimsey (former CEO and board chairman) Steve Case (former CEO and board chairman) Justin Frankel (Nullsoft founder), who resigned in early 2004. Colin Powell (during merging with Time Warner) Marc Andreessen (Netscape co-founder) Karen Thompson (AOL UK CEO) External links AOL-affiliated websites: AOL US AOL Canada AOL UK AOL Australia AOL France AOL Germany AOL Brazil AOL Japan AOL Mexico AOL Argentina AOL Puerto Rico Non-affiliated webpages: AOL: A History AOL Disk Collection The "No More AOL CDs" campaign early analysis of the Time Warner-AOL merger Most Popular Articles: Music    Musical Instruments    Guitar    Classical Music    History    Music Definition    Country Music    Rock Music    Pop Music    Hip Hop    Rap    DJ    Video Games    Casino Games    Poker    Blackjack    Casinos    Real Estate    Loan    Auction    eBay    Marketing    Search Engine Optimization    File Sharing    MP3    Music Industry    Kazaa    Internet    Supermodel    Fashion    Fashion Designers    Erotica    Modeling    Clothing    Boots    Shoes    Diamond Engagement Rings    Diamond    Rugs    Gospel Music    Affiliate    E-Commerce    Radio This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License at http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html You may copy and modify it as long as the entire work (including additions) remains under this license. 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