AOL
AOL LLC (formerly
America Online, Inc) is a
United States-based
online service provider,
bulletin board system, and media company operated by
Time Warner. Based in
Dulles, Virginia, with regional branches around the world, the former "
goliath among
Internet service providers"
had at one time a customer base that reached over 30 million subscribers
and spanned several continents. For many, particularly in America, AOL
was the Internet during the mid-to-late-1990s.
AOL is often regarded as the most difficult Internet service to cancel from, which leads to its now tainted reputation. [
1]
In 2000 AOL and
Time Warner announced plans to merge, in a deal approved by the
FTC on
January 11 2001. The deal came to exemplify the bursting of the
Internet bubble, and was later considered one of the worst corporate mergers in history, destroying over $200 billion in shareholder value.
AOL is a company in transition, made evident by discussions of buy-outs and
joint ventures during a period of dramatic decline in AOL's subscriber base.
News reports in fall 2005 identified companies such as
Yahoo!,
Microsoft, and
Google as candidates for turning AOL into a joint venture
; those plans were apparently abandoned when it was revealed on
December 20,
2005 that Google would purchase a 5% share of AOL for $1 billion.
As of July 2006, the transition continues, with the decline of AOL subscriber base reaching less than 19 million subscribers
in a year that saw
PC World declare it the worst tech product of all time.
| AOL release timeline | | 1989 | AOL for Macintosh gains popularity as a Mac BBS |
| 1991 | AOL for DOS launched |
| 1993 | AOL for Windows launched, AOL 2.0 for Macintosh launched |
| 1994 | AOL 2.0 for Windows launched |
| 1995 | AOL 3.0 launched |
| 1998 | AOL 4.0 launched |
| 1999 | AOL 5.0 launched |
| 2000 | AOL 6.0 (K2) launched |
| 2001 | AOL 7.0 (Taz) launched |
| 2002 | AOL 8.0 (Spacely) launched |
| 2003 | AOL 8.0 Plus (Elroy) launched |
| 2003 | AOL 9.0 Optimized (Bunker Hill) launched |
| 2004 | AOL 9.0 Optimized SE/LE (Tahiti) launched |
| 2004 | AOL 9.0 Security Edition SE/LE (Strauss) launched |
| 2006 | AOL Suite launched |
|
Logo used until late 2004. |
Beginnings
AOL began as a short-lived venture called
Control Video Corporation (or
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 Brothers. (Klein, 2003) 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 an investor in Control Video,
Frank Caufield, had a friend of his,
Jim Kimsey, brought in as a manufacturing consultant. That same year,
Steve Case was hired as a part-time consultant; later on that year, he joined the company as a full-time marketing employee upon the joint recommendations of von Meister and Kimsey. Kimsey went on to become the
Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the newly renamed Quantum Computer Services in 1985, after von Meister was quietly dropped from the company.
Case himself rose quickly through the ranks; Kimsey promoted him to vice-president of marketing not long after becoming CEO, and later promoted him further to executive vice-president in 1987. Kimsey soon began to groom Case to ascend to the rank of CEO, which he did when Kimsey retired in 1991.
Kimsey 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). In May 1988, Quantum and Apple launched
AppleLink Personal Edition for
Apple II and
Macintosh computers. After the two companies parted ways in October 1989, Quantum changed the service's name to America Online.
In August 1988, Quantum launched
PC Link, a service for IBM-compatible
PCs developed in a joint venture with the
Tandy Corporation.
In the early years of AOL the company introduced many innovative online interactive titles and games, including graphical chat environments
Habitat (1986) and
Club Caribe (1989), the first online interactive fiction series
QuantumLink Serial by
Tracy Reed (1988),
Quantum Space, the first fully automated
Play by email game (1989), and the original
Dungeons and Dragons title
Neverwinter Nights, the first Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game (
MMORPG) to depict the adventure with graphics instead of text (1991).
In February 1991 AOL for
DOS was launched using a
GeoWorks interface followed a year later by AOL for Windows. In October 1991, Quantum changed its name to America Online. These changes coincided with growth in pay-based BBS services, like
Prodigy,
CompuServe, and
GEnie. AOL discontinued Q-Link and PC Link in the fall of 1994.
Massive growth
Case drove AOL as the online service for people unfamiliar with
computers, in particular contrast to
CompuServe, which had long served the technical community. AOL was the first online service to require use of
proprietary software, rather than a standard terminal program; as a result it was able to offer a
graphical user interface (GUI) instead of command lines, and was well ahead of the competition in emphasizing communication among members as a feature.
In particular was the Chat Room (borrowed from
IRC), which allowed a large group of people with similar interests to convene and hold conversations in real time, including:
*Private rooms — created by any user. Hold up to 27 people.
*Conference rooms — created with permission of AOL. Hold up to 48 people and often moderated.
*Auditoriums — created with permission of AOL. Consisted of a stage and an unlimited number of rows. What happened on the stage was viewable by everybody in the auditorium but what happened within individual rows, of up to 27 people, was viewable only by the people within those rows.There were also text games played in the chat rooms, known as
AOL chatroom game.
Under Case's guidance, AOL committed to including
online games in its mix of products even when it was only a Commodore 64 service. It hosted the first
Play by email game from any service
Quantum Space (1989-1991); the first graphical online community (
Club Caribe from
LucasArts); the first graphical
MMORPG,
Neverwinter Nights from
Stormfront Studios (1991-1997) and the first chat room-based text role-playing game
Black Bayou (1996-2004), a horror role-playing game from Hecklers Online and
ANTAGONIST, Inc.AOL quickly surpassed
GEnie, and by the mid-1990s, it passed
Prodigy (which for several years allowed AOL advertising) and
CompuServe.
Originally, AOL charged its users an hourly fee, but in 1996 this changed and a flat rate of $19.99 a month was charged. Within three years, AOL's userbase would grow to 10 million people. During this time, AOL connections would be flooded with users trying to get on, and many canceled their accounts due to constant busy signals. Also, games which used to be paid for with the hourly fee migrated in droves to the Internet.
AOL was quickly running out of room in 1996 for its network at the Vienna, VA campus and and moved to Dulles, VA a short distance away. The move to the Dulles took place in 1997 and provided room for future growth.
AOL was relatively late in providing access to the open Internet. Originally, only some Internet features were accessible through a proprietary interface but eventually it became possible to run other Internet software while logged in through AOL. They were the first online service to seamlessly integrate a web browser into content.
AOL introduced the concept of
Buddy Lists, leveraging their one-on-one
instant messaging technology.
Change in focus
Since its merger with Time Warner, the value of AOL has dropped from its $200 billion high and it has seen a similar losses among its subscription rate. It has since attempted to reposition itself as a content provider similar to companies such as Yahoo! as opposed to an Internet service provider which delivered content only to subscribers in what was termed a "walled garden". In 2005, AOL broadcast the
Live 8 concert live over the Internet, and thousands of users downloaded clips of the concert over the following months.
AOL eventually announced plans to offer subscribers classic television programs for free with commercials inserted via its new
IN2TV service. At the time of launch, AOL made available
Warner Bros. Television's vast library of programs, with
Welcome Back Kotter as its marquee offering. Other shows include
Scarecrow and Mrs. King,
The F.B.I.,
F Troop, and
Growing Pains.
In 2006, AOL informed customers that it would increasing the price of its
dial-up access to
$25.90. The increase was part of an effort to migrate the service's remaining dial-up users to broadband, as the increased price was the same price they had been charging for monthly
DSL access.
One of AOL's recently added premium services is AOL Total Talk, a VoIP Internet service.
On
April 3,
2006, AOL announced that the full name "America Online" will be retired, and that the official name of the service is now the acronym "AOL".
On
August 2,
2006, AOL announced that they will give away e-mail accounts and software previously available only to its paying customers in a strategy shift likely to accelerate the decline in its core Internet access business. The decision removes the few remaining reasons for AOL subscribers to keep paying when they already have high-speed Internet access through a cable or phone company. AOL hopes that by making services free, it can draw Internet users to its ad-supported Web sites and keep them from defecting to
Microsoft,
Google and
Yahoo!, which have offered free e-mail for years.
AOL was able to rapidly bolster its growth by mailing out sign-up
diskettes and
CD-ROMs containing free trials to hundreds of millions of households. Once offering only a few hours of free service, the discs now include up to a month's worth of free subscription time.
This long and relentless campaign has produced a backlash, however. One program, called
No More AOL CDs, seeks to gather one million unwanted AOL CDs and dump them at AOL headquarters. Other organizations have objected upon both
environmental and
privacy grounds; for example, many environmentalists say that AOL's CDs are largely unwanted and result in massive non-biodegradable plastic waste.
AOL's mailings have never violated the law, though, and have consistently interested new customers. Although AOL has provided means for people to remove themselves from AOL mailing lists,
No More AOL CDs has documented claims that these removal attempts are sometimes ineffective.
Others view
AOL disks as valuable
collectible items due to the vast number of
CD-ROM design variations.
Community Leaders
Prior to the middle of 2005, AOL used volunteers called
Community Leaders, or CLs, to monitor chatrooms, message boards, and libraries. Some community leaders were recruited for content design and maintenance using a proprietary language and interface called
RAINMAN, although most content maintenance was performed by partner and internal employees.
In 1999, Kelly Hallissey and Brian Williams, former Community Leaders and founders of an anti-AOL website, filed a
class action lawsuit against AOL citing violations of U.S. labor laws in its usage of CLs. The
Department of Labor investigated but came to no conclusions, closing their investigation in 2001. In light of these events, AOL began drastically reducing the responsibilities and privileges of its volunteers in 2000. The program was eventually ended on
June 8,
2005. Current Community Leaders at the time were offered 12 months of credit on their accounts.
Billing disputes
AOL has faced a number of lawsuits over claims that it has been slow to stop billing people after their accounts have been cancelled, either by the company or the user. In addition, AOL changed its method of calculating used minutes in response to a class action lawsuit. Previously, AOL would add fifteen seconds to the time a user was connected to the service and round up to the next whole minute (thus, a person who used the service for 11 minutes and 46 seconds would be charged for 13 minutes). AOL claimed this was to account for sign on/sign off time, but because this practice was not made known to its customers, the plaintiffs won (some also pointed out that signing on and off did not always take 15 seconds, especially when connecting via another ISP). AOL disclosed its connection time calculation methods to all of its customers and credited them with extra free hours. In addition, the AOL software would notify the user of exactly how long they were connected and how many minutes they were being charged.
Account cancellation
In response to approximately 300 consumer complaints,
New York Attorney General
Eliot Spitzer's office began an inquiry of AOL's customer service policies. The investigation revealed that the company had an elaborate system for rewarding employees who purported to retain or "save" subscribers who had called to cancel their Internet service. In many instances, such retention was done against subscribers' wishes, or without their consent.
Under the system, consumer service personnel received bonuses worth tens of thousands of dollars if they could successfully dissuade or "save" half of the people who called to cancel service. For several years, AOL had instituted minimum retention or "save" percentages, which consumer representatives were expected to meet. These bonuses, and the minimum "save" rates accompanying them, had the effect of employees not honoring cancellations, or otherwise making cancellation unduly difficult for consumers.
Many consumers complained that AOL personnel ignored their demands to cancel service and stop billing.
On
August 24 2005, America Online agreed to pay $1.25 million to the state of New York and reformed its customer service procedures. Under the agreement, AOL will no longer require its customer service representatives to meet a minimum quota for customer retention in order to receive a bonus. However, many AOL users outside New York still claim to have problems cancelling their accounts.
On
June 13,
2006, a man named
Vincent Ferrari documented his account cancellation phone call in a
blog post, stating he had switched to broadband years earlier. In the recorded phone call, the AOL representative refused to cancel the account unless the 30-year-old Ferrari explained why AOL hours were still being recorded on it. Ferrari insisted that AOL software was not even installed on the computer. When Ferrari demanded that the account be canceled regardless, the AOL representative asked to speak with Ferrari's father, for whom the account had been set up. The conversation was aired on CNBC. When CNBC reporters tried to have an account on AOL cancelled, they were hung up on immediately and it ultimately took more than 45 minutes to cancel the account.
On
July 19,
2006, AOL's entire
retention manual was released on the Internet. [
2] (7MB PDF)
On
August 3,
2006,
Time Warner announced that the company would be dissolving AOL's retention centers due to its profits
hinging on $1 billion in cost cuts. The company estimates that it will lose more than six million subscribers over the next year. [
3]
Software
In 2000, AOL was served with an $8 billion lawsuit alleging that its (now dated) AOL 5.0 software caused significant difficulties for users attempting to use third-party Internet service providers. The lawsuit sought damages of up to $1000 for each user that had downloaded the software cited at the time of the lawsuit. AOL later agreed to a settlement of $15 million, without admission of wrongdoing. Now, the AOL software has a feature called AOL Dialer, or AOL Connect on Mac OS X. This feature allows users to connect to the ISP without running the full interface. This allows users to use only the applications they wish to use, especially if they do not favor the AOL Browser.
Usenet newsgroups
When AOL gave clients access to
Usenet in 1994, they hid at least one newsgroup in standard list view:
alt.aol-sucks. AOL did list the newsgroup in the alternative description view, but changed the description to "Flames and complaints about America Online".
Terms of Service (TOS)
There have been many complaints over rules that govern AOL's members conduct, called the
Terms of Service, which apply to everyone who uses AOL, regardless of age, or where an AOL member is on the Internet. Claims are that these rules are too strict to follow and do not allow swearing. TOS is known as COS (conditions of service) in the UK.
Certified e-mail
In early 2005, AOL stated its intention to implement
certified e-mail, which will allow companies to send email to users with whom they have pre-existing business relationships, with a visual indication that the email is from a trusted source and without the risk that the email messages might be blocked or stripped by
spam filters. This decision has drawn fire from
MoveOn, which characterizes the program as an "e-mail tax".
Esther Dyson defended the move in a
New York Times editorial saying "I hope Goodmail succeeds, and that it has lots of competition. I also think it and its competitors will eventually transform into services that more directly serve the interests of mail recipients. Instead of the fees going to Goodmail and AOL, they will also be shared with the individual recipients."
Censorship in mainland China
AOL, along with
Google,
Microsoft,
Yahoo,
Cisco,
Skype, and others, has cooperated with the Chinese government in implementing a system of
Internet censorship in mainland China.
Many critics of these corporate policies argue that it is wrong for companies to profit from censorship and restrictions on
freedom of the press and
freedom of speech. The alternative, however, is censorship of the entire website.
Human rights advocates such as
Human Rights Watch and media groups such as
Reporters Without Borders point out that if companies would stop contributing to the authorities' censorship efforts the government could be forced to change.
Search data release
On August 4th, 2006, AOL released a compressed text file on one of its websites containing twenty million search
keywords for over 650,000 users over a 3-month period, intended for research purposes. AOL pulled the file from public access by the 7th, but not before it had been mirrored, P2P-shared and seeded via
BitTorrent. News filtered down to the
blogosphere and popular tech sites such as
Digg and
Wired News.
Whilst none of the records on the file are
personally identifiable per se, certain keywords contain personally identifiable information by means of the user typing in their own name (
ego-searching), as well as their address, social security number or by other means. Each user is identified on this list by a unique sequential key, which enables the compilation of a user's search history.
AOL acknowledged it was a mistake and removed the data, although the files can still be downloaded from mirror sites. [
4] Additionally, several searchable database of the report also exists on the internet. [
5]
A Wiki has been set up by researchers to discuss the dataset at http://www.jmir.org/wiki/index.php/AOL500kAs it grew, AOL purchased many other software companies, including:
*
BookLink bought in December 1994.
*
NaviSoft's
NaviServer (later to become
AOLserver) in 1994.
*
Ubique maker of
Virtual Places in 1995.
*
ImagiNation Network (I.N.N.) from
AT&T in 1996.
*
CompuServe in February 1998.
*
Mirabilis (maker of
ICQ) in 1998.
*PLS text-search software in 1998,
*
Nullsoft (maker of
Winamp), in 1999 for $86 million
*
Netscape, in 1999 for $4.2 billion.
*
Mapquest in 1999.
*
Tegic in December 1999.
*
InfoInterActive, a telecom software company, in July 2001.
*
Singingfish search engine, November 2003.
*
Advertising.com, an Internet advertising agency, in June 2004.
*
MailBlocks, a personal, Web-based email service, in August 2004.
*
Wildseed, a privately held mobile software vendor, in August 2005.
*
Xdrive, a leading provider of online storage and file sharing services, also in August 2005.
*
Weblogs, Inc., a blogging network that runs such sites as
Engadget,
Autoblog,
Cinematical and
TVSquad, in October 2005, for $30 million.
*
Truveo, Inc., a leading video search company, in December 2005, for an undisclosed value.
*
DeadAIM in 2003.
*
Lightningcast, Inc a leading provider of technology that enables broadband audio and video marketing, branding and advertising, in May 2006.
*
Jim Kimsey (former CEO and board chairman)
*
Steve Case (former CEO and board chairman)
*
Jan Brandt (former President of Marketing)
*
Justin Frankel (Nullsoft founder)
*
Ted Leonsis (Vice-Chairman, President AOL Audience Group)
*
Michael Powell (during merging with
Time Warner)
*
Marc Andreessen (Netscape co-founder)
*
Jason Smathers (former AOL employee convicted of stealing the Internet provider's entire subscriber list and selling it to a known spammer.)
*
Jason Calacanis (Co-founder of Weblogs, Inc.)
AOL includes McAfee VirusScan and McAfee Firewall Express for its subscribers. At the time of the release, McAfee VirusScan was 8.0 and Firewall Express was 5.0. Initially, it was only available to subscribers using the AOL 8.0 and 9.0 software; but since is available to anyone as low as 6.0. To install McAfee VirusScan (8.0) for AOL subscribers you may go to AOL Keyword
MCAFEE or access http://install.av.aol.com/. To install the Firewall Express, subscribers may go to AOL Keyword
FIREWALLEXPRESS or access http://memberselfservice.aol.com/firewall/index.adp
Currently, AOL employs the use of Safety & Security Center (SSC) which contains McAfee VirusScan (10.0), McAfee Firewall (7.0), AOL Spyware Protection(2.2), and Phishing Protection. To download and install SSC, AOL subscribers may go to AOL Keyword
SAFETY, or access http://www.aol.com/safety/
Keywords are words or phrases that act as shortcuts to AOL areas and Web sites.For example, to view football news and results, you go to AOL Keyword: Football.
You can use AOL Keywords in either of the following ways:
* Type a keyword directly into the white box on the AOL toolbar, then press the Enter key.
* Press the Ctrl and K keys at the same time, type a keyword and click Go.
Many companies used to pay AOL to have their site featured as an AOL Keyword. When you type in an AOL Keyword, it redirects you to an AOL members-only Site like
aol://1722:billing or
http://channels.aolsvc.co.uk/billing:1722, but you need AOL's browser to access these places. The former uses a proprietary
URI (Uniform Resource Identifier) scheme that does not work in other browsers.
Some AOL keywords at AOL USA, AOL Germany, AOL Canada or AOL UK only works in these countries and cannot be used by AOL customers in other countries (and vice versa). Every other country (where AOL is available) has their own AOL keyword(s).
For a list of available Keywords, go to AOL Keyword: "Keyword List" (rec. for AOL in the United States)
On Wednesday August 2, 2006 AOL announced: "We're in the process of offering all of our content and many of our services for free -- with or without an AOL Internet connection."
* Free email for AOL members and non-members alike which can be accessed either through the company's website or through downloadable software.In upcoming weeks other free new features will be released as well, including:
* Safety and security tools that are optimized to work with or without additional AOL software.
* A new online video service and access to a video search engine.
* A reformatted version of the browser software that will utilize a "four-pane design" to "revolutionize" internet browsing.
*
All caps*
AOHell*
AOHack programs*
AOL Explorer*
Sessions@AOL*
Eternal September*
Inside-AOL.com*Klein, Alec (2003).
Stealing Time: Steve Case, Jerry Levin, and the Collapse of AOL Time Warner. Simon & Schuster. ISBN 0-7432-5984-X.
*Mehta, Stephanie N. & Vogelstein, Fred (Nov. 14, 2005). "AOL: The Relaunch".
Fortune, p. 84–88.
*
Ed Foster's Gripelog ¦¦ Fifty Ways to Leave AOL*
AOL corporate site*
AOL.com*
AOL's Worldwide Services
