AOL

AOL is known as AOL Inc., which was earlier known as America Online. It is an American company that offers web email services. The company is located at 770 Broadway, New York City, US. AOL webmail services is a brand marketed by Yahoo! Inc., a similar company. Historically, it was linked to PlayNET (online service provider) from 1984 to 1987. The PlayNET software was licensed to Quantum Link and went online in November 1985. Later, in 1988, the IBM PC client was released and became popular as America Online in 1989 finally. 

Highlights of the AOL Company 

• AOL was the result of the efforts of its founders- Marc Serrif, Steve Case, Jim Kimsey, and William von Meister. 

• The AOL company was founded in 1983. 

• AOL was marketed by its parent company, Yahoo! Inc

• AOL’s headquarters is based at 770 Broadway, New York City, US. 

Products/ Services

Given below are some of the products and services AOL provides. 

• AOL Mobile

• AOL Instant Messenger

• AOL News

• AOL Local

• Xdrive

• AOL news

• AOL Video

• AOL My address

History 

AOL was founded by William Von Meister and established in 1983. Before that, it was known as Control Video Corporation. AOL worked as an online service provider, GameLine, a console for Atari 2600. Later, a marketing consultant, Steve Case, was hired in January 1983 for the Control Video. Then, Jim Kimsey was hired as the manufacturing consultant for the Control Video. Unfortunately, it was about to go bankrupt at that time. Later, in 1985, Quantum Computer Services, an online services company, was founded. The company was formed by the people of Control Video. In 1991, when Kismey retired, Case was the CEO. 

In 1997, AOL released Netmail, a webmail service. However, this service was criticized for only working on Internet Explorer in the starting phase. However, a Java-based webmail version was released that was compatible with Netscape Navigator. Finally, this service was named AOL Mail in December 1999. Then, after AOL’s successful journey, in 2004, AOL tested some free webmail services for users without subscribing to AOL. This move was an attempt to compete with MSN Hotmail, Gmail, and Yahoo! Then, the service was released in May 2005 as the AIM Mail with 2GB of mail storage and instant messenger. 

Finally, in August 2006, AOL became a free service provider for broadband users, and Netscape Mail was also moved to AIM Mail. Furthermore, AOL launched a new project, Phoenix, in November 2010. It is an email application program that provides a Quick Bar for sending instant messages from one area. This new email application allows users to add up to five accounts to it. AOLhad gained around 24 million users by July 2012, which dropped drastically to only 1.5 million users in 2021. 

Later on, Verizon acquired AOL in 2015 and announced that AOL would no longer provide in-house email services for broadband users. It also migrated all the users to AOL Mail.