The Rise and Fall of AOL

At one point, AOL was synonymous with the internet, but its origins, as well as its ultimate fate, are more surprising than you'd think.

[June-]

For me, the AOL disks weren't annoying, our family was broke so for me it was free internet.

[CadgerChristmasLightShow]

This is a video really shows that you are good at making these video essays, because its so interesting that it is actually worth hearing that terrible mic quality haha... i hope you make it big and are able to get a really nice mic, you certainly have the talent to use one!

[darkninjafirefox]

my friend's grandma still paid AOL for email because she didn't know you don't have to anymore

[parker_aug]

Glad AOL as an ISP eventually failed. I was a member, and there were so many problems with the service (slow, wouldn't dial-in) because the company was so obsessed with stuffing as many new members as they could. And quitting the service... that was hell. You had to call in, and their aggressive reps would give you 100 reasons not to quit and debate with you for seemingly forever.

[umachan]

AOL is more or less how people accessed the internet back in the day. My parents were on AOL for the longest time because it was easy to use. In fact my Dad didn't understand the difference between AOL as a site and AOL as a portal. He was so resistant to change that he would rather pay the full amount every month instead of moving to a cheaper ISP because, "it was too confusing".

[turbofiat]

I wanted a Gameline for my Atari so bad I couldn't stand it. But because I did not live in a metropolitan area like New York or Chicago, there was no way I could afford the long distance telephone charges to operate the system. Plus I was 12 so I didn't have any money to begin with. That's probably the main reason the Gameline went bankrupt and the system was not a success.

Compuserve was the same way. You had to live in a city of well over 100, 000 people, otherwise they didn't offer local telephone numbers.

People don't remember that long distance land line calls where expensive back in those days. People take for granted being able to call anywhere in the US for free on a cell phone today. I think I read a long distance all from New York to LA was something like $1.00 per minute back in the 1970s. Thank God for the government bust up of AT&T back in 1983.

[Testcat]

You should remake your older videos with a better mic, this is nearly unwatchable

[thatgirl]

THOSE DISCS WERE A PLAGUE. Probably still a few in my family's old storage shed along with some from Earthlink.

[andywolan]

The audio for this video sounds like it came from a Real Audio stream that someone saved to disk from a dial-up connection. Was that done intentionally to give it a 90's feel?

[TheJaguar]

R.I.P.
The Little Yellow AIM Man
December 2017
😭

[bxdanny]

If I remember correctly, Gamelink had 9600 bps modems at a time when the modems used with computers (for BBSs and such) were 1200 bps, or maybe 2400 tops. I wondered how they were able to do that. I never bothered with an Atari VCS/2600 myself, but I did get a Commodore 64 when they came out and was Q-Link subscriber.

[glowflowerxochi]

Heyo, just found this channel and have been bingeing for hours. Thumbs up on the quality of the writing and interesting content! I love finding channels that explain this kind of stuff in an actually interesting way

[BlazeingGoldReviews]

besides the mic quality or lack thereof, this is a pretty good video and i strongly believe you deserve more views and subscribers.

[yungwhye]

that compression tho!!! great vid btw!

[Sabermoose]

Thanks for talking about my granddad (Bill von Meister)

- Maximilian

[PapiJack]

Great videos man thanks. One observation though, you need better audio quality.

[chromosoze]

5:13
you see old logo
*what is that*
you see new logo
*wait i saw that logo before*

[garydunken]

Dude, your video story telling was good, but audio sucked. Are you still using AOL?

[WAQWBrentwood]

During AOL's "boom" era, A popular alternative name for it was "America On Hold" 😁

[Charlesb]

What really killed AOL in its original form, was two key issues that roared their head in the late 90’s. Before the internet was opened to the public to any significant degree, as it was in the mid 90s, AOL had an advantage as it provided a wall garden of desirable content you had to sign up to AOL to access. Once much of this content migrated its way to the newly developed word wide web around ‘95, AOL started to loose a key reason to sign up for it or for that matter any “online service” such as CompuServe or Prodigy over a simple dial-up ISP. The other factor was the rise in broadband internet with DSL and Cable internet coming out to n the late 90’s. AOL was in a strong position when it came to dial-up access but not so much with broadband as it did not have the infrastructure to offer broadband they way the phone companies and cable providers did. This meant they had to partner with a broadband provider and they did so by offer bundles where AOL access was bundled with DSL broadband from your local phone company but at a higher rate then broadband alone went for in those days. But why would any want to pay extra for access to AOL content/services that was now largely also on the web? The answer was a lot fewer people did and AOL’s subscribers numbers dropped as they switch simply Broadband ISP’s. At some point they largely had only those subscribers unwilling to pay for broadband and for whom dial-up was good enough or those who mistakenly thought the had to pay to keep their AOL email address (after AOL switched to free email). They same problem befell CompuServe and Prodigy as there proprietary content/services also became less relevant with the web.