AOL Media LLC (formerly a predecessor company known as AOL Inc. and originally known as America Online)[1] is an American web portal and former online service provider based in New York City, and a brand marketed by Italian conglomerate Bending Spoons.
The service traces its history to an online service known as PlayNET. PlayNET licensed its software to Quantum Link (Q-Link), which went online in November 1985. A new IBM PC client was launched in 1988, and eventually renamed as America Online (abbreviated as AOL) in 1989. AOL grew to become the largest online service, displacing established players like CompuServe and Prodigy. By 1995, AOL had about three million active users.[2]
AOL was at one point the most recognized brand on the Web in the United States. AOL once provided a dial-up Internet service to millions of Americans and pioneered instant messaging and chat rooms with AOL Instant Messenger (AIM). In 1998, AOL purchased Netscape for US$4.2 billion. By 2000, AOL was providing internet service to over 20 million consumers, dominating the market of internet service providers (ISPs).[3] In 2001, at the height of its popularity, it purchased the media conglomerate Time Warner in the largest merger in US history. AOL shrank rapidly thereafter, partly due to the decline of dial-up and rise of broadband.[4]
AOL was spun off from Time Warner in 2009, with Tim Armstrong appointed the new CEO. Under his leadership, the company invested in media brands and advertising technologies. In 2015, AOL was acquired by Verizon Communications for $4.4 billion,[5][6] and was merged with Yahoo! the following year after the latter was also acquired by Verizon.
In May 2021, Verizon announced it would sell Verizon Media (and thus AOL) to private equity firm Apollo Global Management for $5 billion,[7] and the sale was completed at the end of August.[8][9]
In October 2025, Apollo reached a $1.5 billion deal to sell AOL to the Italian conglomerate Bending Spoons. The purchase was quietly completed in January 2026, Bending Spoons then laid off more than 100 AOL employees in February 2026.[10][11][12][13]
History
1983–1991: early years
AOL began in 1983, as a short-lived venture called Control Video Corporation (CVC), founded by William von Meister. Its sole product was an online service called GameLine for the Atari 2600 video game console, after von Meister's idea of buying music on demand was rejected by Warner Bros.[14] 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 $1 per game.[15] The telephone disconnected and the downloaded game would remain in GameLine's Master Module, playable until the user turned off the console or downloaded another game.
In January 1983, Steve Case was hired as a marketing consultant for Control Video on the recommendation of his brother, investment banker Dan Case. In May 1983, Jim Kimsey became a manufacturing consultant for Control Video, which was near bankruptcy. Kimsey was brought in by his West Point friend Frank Caufield, an investor in the company.
Products and services
Content
Along with the core of AOL, brands such as Engadget,[123] Autoblog,[124] TechCrunch,[82] and Built by Girls[125] became part of Verizon Media (now Yahoo) in 2015.[126]
Criticism
In its earlier incarnation as a "walled garden" community and service provider, AOL received criticism for its community policies, terms of service, and customer service. Prior to 2006, AOL was known for its direct mailing of CD-ROMs and 3.5-inch floppy disks containing its software. The disks were distributed in large numbers; at one point, half of the CDs manufactured worldwide had AOL logos on them.[22] The marketing tactic was criticized for its environmental cost, and AOL CDs were recognized as PC World's most annoying tech product.[148][149]
Community leaders
AOL used a system of volunteers to moderate its chat rooms, forums and user communities. The program dated back to AOL's early days, when it charged by the hour for access and one of its highest billing services was chat. AOL provided free access to community leaders in exchange for moderating the chat rooms, and this effectively made chat very cheap to operate, and more lucrative than AOL's other services of the era. There were 33,000 community leaders in 1996.[150]
See also
- Adrian Lamo – Inside-AOL.com
- AOHell
- Comparison of webmail providers
- David Shing
- Dot-com bubble
- Elwood Edwards
- List of acquisitions by AOL
- List of S&P 400 companies
- Live365
- Truveo
External links
References
- William L. Hosch. AOL Encyclopædia Britannica, 2021-11-18, retrieved 2023-05-02^
- Matt Nollinger. America, Online! Wired, September 1, 1995, retrieved October 25, 2018^
- Guise Bule. A Short History of the Internet ITSEC, 2020-03-31, retrieved 2024-01-21