AOL

AOL is an initialism for America Online, a corporate ISP. The ISP is owned
by AOL Time Warner; which uses the NYSE stock symbol "AOL". America Online
is perhaps best known for the "AOL Instant Messenger" (AIM) [1]; a free
"instant messenger" computer program.

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 video game specialist 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 MS-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 early 1990s, AOL was among the first service providers to give
customers from outside academia and the military access to the Internet.
They also emphasized a relatively user-friendly, graphics-heavy interface.
As such, they were primarily associated with the influx of new users,
unversed in netiquette, who came online in that period. In some quarters,
such as Usenet, their name remains synonymous with impolite and ignorant new users.

AOL has long maintained a massive marketing push, mailing sign-up disks to
over 100 million households, which fueled a massive growth and helped them
dominate the online field. Today their main competitor is Microsoft's MSN.

In the late 1990s and into the early 2000s, AOL began purchasing and
supporting many popular software projects and companies. These ventures
include Nullsoft's Winamp, purchased in 1999 for $86 million, Netscape,
Mozilla (now an independant organization), and ICQ. Some of these projects
are open source.

In 2000 it merged with Time Warner. See AOL Time Warner for more information.

Notable Persons Associated With AOL

   * Steve Case (Former CEO)
   * Justin Frankel (Nullsoft founder)

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