$200 Billion To Irrelevant - What Happened To AOL?

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Do you remember a company called AOL? If you were born after 2000, you may not even be familiar with this company, but their contribution to the tech world was massive. They were the ones that popularized the internet across America by essentially giving everyone free trials to connect to the internet with their famous disks. But, over time, they slowly fell behind. They went from being the ones pioneering internet applications to being an internet infrastructure company, and this trend went into overdrive with their controversial $350 billion merger with Timer Warner Cable. Since then, AOL has been largely forgotten about and replaced by up-and-coming competitors like Google, Facebook, and modern ISPs. Things would get so bad that AOL would end up posting the worst corporate loss in history of $98.7 billion before getting acquired by Verizon for just $4.4 billion. This video explains the rise and fall of AOL and how an internet pioneer ended up losing it all.

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Timestamps:
0:00 - The State Of AOL
2:24 - Ahead Of Their Time
5:27 - In Line With Their Time
8:52 - Behind The Times

Resources:

Disclaimer:
This video is not a solicitation or personal financial advice. All investing involves risk. Please do your own research.

[freesk]

I'm still using an AOL account I got in 1994.

[rustymustard]

Back in the day AOL allowed you to pay your bill through your phone bill. You entered your phone number and it was billed through them. 'Problem' was they didn't verify phone numbers, so i entered one of AOL's internal phone numbers and had free AOL till the day the closed.

[tonytins]

My aunt used to work for AOL during the late 90s and early 2000s. She helped set up my first AOL account, that I still have it to this day. She sent a lot of merchandise to us that, as a kid, I was always super excited to get. We used AOL's dial-up all the way until mid 2000s. After the Time Warner purchase, she complained about how crazy the work environment had become and eventually left before the company came crashing down. By that point, we had finally switched to DSL and later cable internet.

[toddfraser]

One aspect I found was, as AOL went from a Graphical BBS, to an Internet provider, was people increasingly becoming less interested in the AOL only service, but to the general Internet Hosted Somewhere Else Service. For those still using dial up found other ISP that were half the cost, or just used Cable or DSL Internet, which was a bit more, but offered more speed. Once people learned that AOL wasn't the Internet, they began to loose interest in it.

[SG-bsdm]

Even though I was in my 20s when AOL launched my husband and I never used it. We used other early browsers so I never had to hear “you’ve got mail”

[GrubbsandWyrm]

I used to do tech support for AOL. it seemed like i spent most of my te explaing how to do cntrl alt delete to old people

[hitmusicworldwide]

AOL was where we met girls. As soon as I found out that power I knew it was going to blow up. A friend of mine who was in the IT industry said it's going to go away when the internet comes, but it still hung on much longer than a lot of us expected

[SquareTableDegenerates]

I had the guy who says the AOL sounds on my show, El Edwards, the "You've Got Mail" guy. He recorded the sounds in 1989 on a tape recorder.

[RaoBlackWellizedArman]

I guess for people not living in the US, AOL was that one icon on IE homepage which we never know what it's good for!

[sophiaisabelle]

We appreciste your dedication and hard work. You'll always have our support.

[nonyabizwax]

I miss aol. Especially the chat rooms

[DugEphresh]

I remember being a cable dog and doing some network cabling work at their Sterling VA, location. The receptionist who we were checking in with was a multi millionaire at the time, man I hope she got out fast enough because she was a sweetheart.

[skelebro]

Can you make more videos on tech companies like HP or Acer or ASUS like how you did with Lenovo?

[jerkytoo]

I remember going away to college in the mid-90s not being all that aware of AOL. When I went back home after my freshman year, AOL was everywhere. Commercials from every major company included the "AOL keyword" for their company or product.

[MithunOnTheNet]

I worked at AOL, out of Bangalore, for 8+ years. It was a great company to work for but I could see the writing on the wall for its downfall.

[btterman]

My parents use AOL to this day. They're in their 90s. I was the Netscape generation.

[harambetidepod]

The internet as we know it has only been around for 20 some odd years.
There is still so much untapped opportunity it pisses me off that I can't think of any billion dollar ideas lol

[MysteryArchives]

I really think AOL just didn't keep up with the times and fell short.

[caseycu]

AOL wasn’t really an internet service provider, they were their own private network that didn’t offer access to the full internet until 1995.

[JaesonL]

I wish there was a way to get access to old AOL emails for accounts that were deactivated. I hadn’t logged into my AOL email for a long time, and when I tried password recovery or just entering the last known password associated with my account, it had already been wiped away. Would be funny to see what my 1999-ish self was sending and receiving back then.