What Happened to America Online? [LGR Tech Tales]

This episode covers the story of AOL from birth to collapse, by way of the Apple Link and endless free disks and CDs. Join me in LGR Tech Tales, looking at stories of technological inspiration, failure, and everything in-between!

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● Social links:

● Background music credits:
"Nautical 2" by Loscil

"Anekbah Theme"

"Milinda" by Diode Milliampere

"Rhodes to Heaven 2," "After The Storm 3," "Werewolfdance"

"Twin Shine"

● Main sources for info:

[LGR]

If you'd like even more AOL history, be sure to check out my Quantum Link episode:

[AKShamu]

Relatively recently, I was playing Overwatch and I ran into Elwood Edwards. I complimented him on his voice, saying that he should be a voice actor, on a podcast, or something, and he was just like, "Yeah, thanks I get that alot! I actually used to be the voice of America Online." we had a relatively short discussion for a few minutes and it kinda just blew my mind that I randomly bumped into a legend through Overwatch of all things. Small world we live in, I suppose.

[sparkly]

"Get off the Internet I need to make a phone call!"

[ParadoxdesignsOrg]

I'm typing this on a Pentium 90, in a Cabin in the woods. using Windows 95, Dialup and Bonzi Buddy.

[bemannen]

WWF wrestler Brett Hart dressed as Billy Ray Cyrus holding a floppy disc for an America Online ad is one of the most 90's pictures ever.

[TheBitGuy]

The nice thing about the floppy disks is that I could re-use them by re-formatting them and peeling off the label. The CDs were totally worthless. Also don't forget how they use to scam people. Their software was like a virus. Sometimes it was impossible to remove from a system once installed. Also they would continue to charge people even after they cancelled their service and getting your money back from them was impossible.

[thetaleteller]

This AOL-Kids screen must have been the key inspiration to the designers of Windows 8+ GUI.

[crumplezone]

I`m still downloading a movie from 1997 on AOL

[ScreamingAllTheTime]

Back in December 2009 my second grade teacher gave us a super cool craft of turning disks into tree ornaments using our school photo, glitter glue, and wrapping paper. A couple years ago the wrapping paper stated to peel, revealing it was an AOL disk. Got ahold of some old classmates and discovered that they too, had AOL disk-turned ornaments. I’m not sure if our entire class had them, but certainly a lot of us did.

[quasicroissant]

Tech tales is probably my favorite series on this channel!

[eIucidate]

I can't help but feel that the rebranding to "America Online" played a major role in its warm reception by the public. It was very clever.

[judevecoli]

My memories of AOL are near and dear to my heart. Especially the chat room connection that lead to my meeting the man I would eventually marry. Sadly, we have since divorced. But I will always credit AOL for that random connection that became some of the happiest years of my life.

[mikhaelis]

God I miss the golden age of AOL. Back then, I couldn't imagine AOL ever becoming obsolete.

[Adridle]

I remember stacking up "One month free" CD's as a teenager to have free internet forever. Didn't use more than 4 months tho.

[theSato]

As a kid, I snatched up about 100 of those free AOL CDs from somewhere, and stuck them all to the ceiling in my room - it looked pretty cool xD

[TheChipmunk]

"apple turned out to be hard to get along with".... some things never change

[randomizer]

Ahh AOL, my favorite frisbee manufacturer of the early 00s...

[JohnRiggs]

I remember going from $5/hr. to unlimited. That's like going from h'orderves to an all-you-can-eat buffet.

[Cerealbox]

It's hard to overemphasize how brilliant the floppy disk campaign was. People didn't know much about computers yet, and AOL became *ubiquitous*. No one would go out of their way to look for another service and software when you were guaranteed to have a copy of AOL. For a while, many people didn't know the difference between AOL and the internet.

[exquisitecorpse]

Bill Von Meister deserves his own episode!! He did SO MANY revolutionary things in terms of early internet innovations, and his name is barely known outside of computer science circles.