The Decline of AOL...What Happened?
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 30 ก.ย. 2024
- AOL became massively popular in the 1990's but has since fallen off almost completely in the world of online services. This video talks about how they rose to that level and the reasons behind their decline from it.
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![What Happened to America Online? [LGR Tech Tales]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/A3DudqwsRPw/mqdefault.jpg)
“Get off the internet we need to use the phone “
But Mom....."You've got Mail"
I heard that alot lol
OMG...you bringing back sum serious memories
Classic!!!
I remember getting in trouble for BBSing, dialing up from my computer to another computer using text-based menus to communicate and play rudimentary text-based games.
The Decline of the History Channel
Theres no evidence that aliens werent at the first thanksgiving...
Decline of cowboy butt sex
Did Aliens influence the Nazis?
Decline of people banging
@@donkeyhobo34 sodameeeee. Sodameeeee.
Dad: "I'll need you to stay off the internet for a while, I'm expecting a call"
I literally heard my dad's voice in my head while reading this lol
That's why I always was on late at night. I would get off of work at 1:00 AM and be on AOL until 3:00 AM as that is when they would shutdown for maintenance. I did end up meeting my wife in there, so it is a fond memory.
We had two phone lines. I paid the phone bills. It was a critical piece of equipment. I used it to download Half Life 2. I'd have it downloading all night. Wake in the morn, start the day. Go to work, come home. Open up the old olive drab Steam platform, pause download. Surf the net for the evening. Get ready for bed, open up Steam, hit the Resume Download button and go to bed. I don't even remember how long it took for that grand and glorious day when it finally said *Download Comeplete* Game Ready to Play.
My parents eventually solved this issue by paying for a second phone line. They got rid of the second phone line in 2002, when broadband became affordable. I do not feel any nostalgia for the days of AOL. It would take two hours to download one normal-length song in mp3 format. A short video would take hours and hours. And if you lost the connection in the middle of a download, well, too bad, you'd have to start all over again. Plus websites would take several minutes to load. Broadband is so awesome, because everything is instant.
@@hamsterama I think the nostalgia people feel is more about what an exciting time it was. No doubt our high speed internet is way better but most of us alive today witnessed the birth of the information age first hand. Nothing like this had happened since the industrial revolution. Entire generations pass between moments like that, so we really are lucky to have been there and experienced it.
AOL will always hold a very special place in my heart. It's where I met my husband 22 years ago. We met in a chatroom one day in June of 2000 by total fate. It turned out that we only lived just over 3 hours apart (within reasonable driving distance), with me living in central Maine and him in Boston. We had a great deal in common as he was a paramedic and I had just become an EMT, which was how we initially connected and bonded. I was only 18 and had just graduated from high school and he had just turned 30, so there was an 11-year age gap, but we instantly connected. Instant messaging on AOL turned into hours long phone calls. Then, about a week after we started talking, he made the trip to meet me and we spent several amazing days together in Acadia National Park and almost instantly fell in love. The rest is history. We had an amazing 22 years together and were rarely ever apart. He was my soulmate and the love of my life, not to mention my rock. If it hadn't been for AOL, we never would have crossed paths and met. Sadly, he passed away exactly 1 month and 2 days ago very suddenly and unexpectedly and I miss him so, so much. 😥 Thank you, AOL, for leading me to the love of my life.
I'm sorry about your loss. I hope you'll find peace and comfort as time passes. ❤
Thanks for sharing 💕
Wow, awesome story!
That's a wonderful story. You never know where you'll find love, often in the most unexpected places.
Amazing story. I’m sorry for you loss, but I’m happy you found your true love.
Somehow the excitement of "you've got mail" faded to "ughhhh 46 emails I have to delete."
All of it spam too
Why I stopped caring years ago hello spam goodbye time wasted
Ugh my Gmail inbox currently has 9967 emails and I’m always at risk of running out of storage…mostly from spam 😑
I’ve got wayyyy more than that.
I have 8000 msg unread from 5 gmail accounts…💀
No joke: I knew a guy who collected so many AOL discs that he made a coffee table out of them.
Aaron Clift Now THATS art. Lol
So he scooped up like one week's worth of mailed out discs to his immediate neighborhood, lol.
Seriously, I think we had more AOL discs than all other spam mail combined.
That's dedication. I got felt for the bottoms of the discs and made coasters. LOL
My late grandfather used them as coasters in his house
I still have a few AOL discs left! Time to use them now I guess....
Chatting on AIM during high school years is a fond memory.
Haha yeah, I remember using Trillian so I could talk to my friends on MSN and AIM at the same time without having to run both separately. That and good ol ICQ. Man the 90/early 2000s were awesome
And ICQ, MSN, and mIRC.
Yes!! Take me back 😩
Back in middle school me and my friends went around and stole everyone's CDs got hundreds of them and had a huge frisbee fight in a field
@@Rumple. lol!
I miss AOL, the chatrooms, the icons, the sound effects, and the folks I met through AOL. Crazy, things are not the same unfortunately.
I don't miss dial up but the rest yes.
A shame AOL couldn’t adapt to changing times with faster internet technologies.
Man the chat rooms
@@prettypuff1every day after school I'd go to my library just so I could use the official Sum41 chatroom. Man I miss those flame wars, so many "your mom" insults were thrown around
I remember IRC type chat rooms being very popular in that era...
I use the AIM chat message sound for my text messages. Every once in a while, I love when someone will hear it and see them perk up like "Wait, I know that sound."
Same lol
I’m inspired by this
That makes me happy
Not AOL related, but I do the same thing. My iPhone ringtone is the old Nokia tone.
I can remember the sound in my head. Ca ching!
I miss that modem noise...yes being able to access the internet in two seconds is nice, but that noise made every log-in feel epic, like opening the Stargate or something.
I don't miss dial-up at all. Slow, noisy, and bulky.
@meaturama Stargate is a sci-fi franchise where the then-contemporary US Air force conducted off world exploration using an ancient teleportation device called the Stargate, a giant ring that can connect to other such ring via a wormhole. The original series' earth gate had to be physically dialed like an oversized rotary phone, with an inner ring being spun around to dial a gate address. The original series Stargate SG-1 was quite good. I highly recommend it
That sound ruled.
@meaturama I know what a Stargate is...but WTF is a 'sargate'?
you're likely the only one who thinks of that sound in nostalgia.... bahaha >.
I'm old enough to remember when those free disks AOL mailed out were floppies.
3.5 BABY
LOL...we never ran out of floppies. Those bad boys kept coming. It kinda sucked when they switched to CD's (and was neat to see the mini-CD's), but it didn't take too long before floppies were made irrelevant. But man, those were the days.
I remember getting floppy disks from all of my friends so that I could get enough to install Linux on my system.
Yup
jw11432 it took a very long time. Starting with 5 1/4’s, I was using floppies since the late 70’s
I remember signing up in 1996 and just trying over and over to actually go online, because I was always getting the busy signal. Then they came out with the redialer and it would do the work for me. Just hearing that electronic modem sound after it connected followed by "Welcome! You've got mail!" was like winning the lottery.
Hey ! Can you reply if you're available
@@akashsingha4368 Okay
@@ralphus44 I had a college project based on aol case study.
Everyone got so psyched when they heard "You've got mail"
HOLY HOLY!!! I can proudly say that I have the two HOTTEST women on this planet as MY GIRLFRIENDS! I am the unprettiest TH-camr ever, but they love me for what's inside! Thanks for listening san
@@AxxLAfriku HOL UP you have two? If so then your a god damn pimp.
My first email was spam lol
@@AxxLAfriku why is this a response to my comment? Frankly I don't think anyone cares how many gfs u have. Hard enough to please one good woman.
I need. It was great hearing it when I went on years ago.
At some point, most of us have logged out of aol and heard that, “Goodbye!” for the very last time...
Something to think about.
Nope! The voice still exists lol! So does the “ you got mail” voice.
I'm too high for this
Remember the option to change your "Welcome," "You've got mail," and "Goodbye" greetings? I had Garfield as mine when I was ~10. AOL was great.
I got mail, i got mail, i got mail, yayyyyyyyyyy
My childhood! 🤯
Gameline, requires expensive hardware, has questionable game choices, relies on being online....
So basically Stadia?
We didn't start the fire...
@@HeavyMetalMouse swap expensive hardware for expensive internet and your super correct
Too soon?
You also forgot Sega Channel. It's also the same but uses cable TV that pioneered the cable internet.
Those that forget the past...
As a teen during the burst of AOL, the reason for its death among everyone I knew was the rise of broadband. Online games were becoming more mainstream, and when a technology became more mainstream that allowed people to browse the internet or game and not take up the phone line (DSL), everyone flocked to it. My family went to DSL ~2003-2004. Side note, I lost count of how many times I heard "WHO IS ON THE INTERNET, GET OFF I NEED TO USE THE PHONE" haha
Yup this. I see alot of other people claiming other things but it was honestly this.
I remember trying to play Tony Hawk Underground online on dial up lol. It was atrocious. DSL got a little better and then when broadband hit, AOL couldn't keep up with the tech advancements. Or they just kinda gave up really.
Instead of advancing they just threw in the towel and said "good run".
@@alec57 fyi DSL is broadband, even that bog slow 128k was broadband in its day, i remember getting DSL in 2005, my family where late to the party, but we finally got it, and OMG i so loved 1.5MB/s downloads vs the earthlink we had that said it was like having a 96kb/s connection lol
@@candle86 Holy crap I remember Eathlink... that service was so bad. We had Netzero too for a while lol. Couldn't connect half the time.
@@alec57Why couldn't AOL have just offered broadband access through the phone companies?
I remember AOL offering broadband at some point, I wonder what went wrong.
Can't forget when one time my dad wanted to use the phone. He picked it up, heard that funny dial up sound and was very confused. He said, "What's that noise?!" It was too funny 😂
When most Americans could get faster internet connectivity at a cheaper price through their cable provider...that doomed AOL
What about Canadians too ?
ISP's used to provide email and webspace. Now they charge more and provide neither. A lot of 'standards' have changed. That's why I avoided AOL because I could have a free webpage and multiple email accounts for the same price as AOL.
I worked at an aol tech support call center, I knew they were doomed when people who had roadrunner started asking me if they could connect to the internet by simply using their browser. Once people realized that they didnt need the aol junk software it was done.
@HI BYE lol no.
Didn't help that, if memory serves, AOL were much better salesmen than providers of a quality product.....The family was subscribed to AOL for a week or so sometime before 2000...And that was long enough.
“Free trial” but you could keep signing up with a new CD. So many CDs used for hours of online age of empires.
Bruh that was my game. Did you play AOE1 or 2
Do you remember when they came out with Juno and net zero free dialup
I would just call them to cancel but they would always give me three more months of free service if I'd stay with them. It went on like that for like a year.😆
That's what boosted their user account numbers drastically. People creating several new accounts helped pad their numbers
Age of Empires is still so amazing.
AIM was everything back then
Tru
@Trantor The Troll 😂😂😂😂
@Trantor The Troll Tell me about it. I met so many friends on ICQ. I even had a long-distance girlfriend, and me and all my ICQ friends would get on Furcadia and make cool maps (aka Dreams) and roleplay as furries before it was cringe. Ah, those were the days.
AIM made me who I am today and the wild success of my high schools years and my 20s.
Icq
I joined AOL back in the 90’s because it seemed to be the most bang for the buck. CompuServe and others was around before AOL but just seemed to be too expensive, so I never tried the others. AOL’s campaign to let users try it out for free for a trial period was a good move and is why I even tried it. Once on, I was hooked. It was only after cable came out with broadband, that I left AOL, but I remember using AOL messenger for some time after switching to broadband so that I could chat with all my friends how were still putting up with the slow dial-up method.
Broadband killed it. You didn't need AOL to get access to the Internet. Is was good for e-mail, but the other features were poor compared to those then being offered by others directly on the Internet.
@@hewitc But but but Slingo!!!
I was a teenager during AOL's boom years, having graduated in 2001. Everything shifted culturally in 2000. The moment broadband hit the market everyone my age jumped on it immediately. I remember my friend getting a cable modem and canceling AOL at the same time. Everyone I knew did the same. At that point our landing page for the internet became Google or some other search engine. It was all about AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) from that point on. Also, a lot of people used ICQ or Yahoo messenger. This was also when message boards really took off in popularity.
Really though, what drove broadband was Napster, and later Limewire. If you wanted a ton of music and movies you had to drop AOL and get broadband.
Remembering ICQ's interface and sounds makes me incredibly nostalgic.
aim and limewire sum up my childhood
Same here Class of ‘01. I remember our shitty little neighborhood got Comcast broadband in ‘98-99. A friend of mine was lucky enough to have a It and good computer. We would use it to play Quake and CS at blazing speeds. Not to mention it was a godsend for school reports. And was about 80% cheaper then it is today. Comcast you’ve become the villain.
I graduated in 07 and I think i was 15 or 16 when we got broadband. It was amazing. My mom and I used to watch Foamy the Squirrel videos and we would let it load and go do other things and come back a half hour later and the video was finally loaded. When we got broadband it would load up in like 10 minutes and then the world of music theft became known to me. I miss the early, wild ass days of the internet. But AIM was where it was at. Like you get home from school, get in the computer and chat with your friends about what moody song lyrics to put up for that day because Amy was a totally f-ing B, in science class.
Also a 2001 high school grad, funny how this is nostalgic lol
*They may have lasted longer if they would NOT have sent all those damn CDs* I received at least 200 of them!
Lmaoo ikr
Those cds is what drove their growth. But at some point reached saturation. I guess it was the only way they knew and couldn't adjust
Only 200? But what did you use for insulating your house and attic after your coaster and frisbee collection was complete?
UMM...
OK THEN.
I hear you. I literally had internet for free for years due to those free trials. Why pay for it when I could just get anther free trial? That may of helped in their downfall. The free trial CDs may have helped with name recognition, but I doubt if it helped with revenue.
Met my wife on AOL, in a "Yo Momma Jokes" chatroom. She couldn't resist my, Yo momma so stupid, that she asked for help to finish completing a tiger puzzle. I said that's a box of Frosted Flakes. Been married 15 years and counting.
Yo momma so bald that when she takes a shower she gets brainwashed.
Yo mamma must be proud. I know, it's lame, but probably true.
Damn
One of my favorite chatrooms 🙌🏾
This is the most wholesome story I've read on the internet recently.
At my last job, AOL was a client of the company I worked for so I got the chance to visit the AOL headquarters once, which I did not know was in my area (DC). This was probably 2017/2018, it was weird because they have pretty tight security, like metal detectors, gates, and all. And the updated logos on the outside made me think they were making or getting ready to make a comeback. But once inside, it was sad. Like one of those dying malls. Broken lights, damaged walls in areas, etc. All while being an active workplace. It was a pretty big campus and wonder what it was like during its hey day. I grew up on AOL and anyone born in the 90s have some nostalgia towards it. I still remember the last time I used it, we had just got Verizon DSL and the AOL program changed from blue to gold. I was finally able to watch videos. Thanks AOL for being such an important part of my life growing up, but like most technology, RIP.
It seems like most mergers are failures. I guess they do it because it increases the shareholders' stock prices, even for a brief moment.
@@adaywithoutdonald64I don’t think it was because of the merger. It’s just a result of technology constantly changing. Look at cable/satellite tv or blockbuster. Great products during its prime but eventually if they don’t innovate, they’ll be phased out. I mean look at TH-cam for example. It was on its way out before it was bought by Google. AOL wasn’t able to provide an alternative to dial up and ultimately failed because of that. But I bet if they had become a leader in internet providers, they’d be a big company now like Google or Facebook.
Lol tf I did aol tech support in 2012.... They still going old ppl rely on it
My dad still has an aol email. The "You've got mail!" sound still plays.
No way
For real?
@@undermoonlightglow I have one as well and I can confirm. It does still play
My father-in-law still does, too. He's 75 and he won't get even use gmail even though he has an account through his android phone.
@@honolulublues5548 I don't blame him, I dont use my gmail either
You got MAIL!
No, today it is YOU GOT SPAM! (Out the ass!)
@@HangTimeDeluxe Ok. . . Some license had to be taken to convert the traditional movie phrase to one more analogous with todays personage. I seriously doubt many viewers of You tube material would scarily even notice. But thank you. . OEG!
AOL UK was "You have email"
@@goodfeather16 Mine was Joanna Lumley saying "You have email"
I can't believe Gameline was doing that in '83. It seems like they were maybe a bit too ahead of their time but were kind of part in helping pave the way to what we have now.
My parents considered getting it for our 2600 but it was pretty expensive, along with a whole bunch of other Atari stuff that was getting churned out that turned out to be junk so they probably figured it wasn't worth the cost. I remember the '83 crash vividly too because of how annoyed I was after spending $40-$50 per game right before it and how junky a lot of the titles were. It seems cool in hindsight but at the time it was percieved as overpriced and overhyped junk.
I had one as a kid. The problem was I didn't know you couldn't just switch games so I went through my monthly limit in 3 days, then the decline happened.
does anyone remember something called the SEGA channel? This was kind of similar, except it was in the '90s, and it went through the cable company instead of the phone lines. Basically, for a flat monthly rate, it had a device that plugged into your Sega Genesis console, and each month you'd get a selection of games you could download and play. Each month it would change to different games. There were dozens each month to choose from. Very similar to what this guy tried to do, except more successful.
@@GregNixon was there lag in those titles? We didn't have SEGA channel. Was it like PlayStation Now or Google Stadia where games were streamed onto the console or home system?
Easier to see why some intelligentsia , such as Eric Weinstein, say we are innovatively stagnant and have been for decades.
I was in high school marching band in the early 2000s (I know, need alert). We would use those AOL CDs as place-markers on the ground when learning our marching sets. My first year we used poker chips, but AOL CDs turned out to be cheaper and more readily available.
Haha then one day they were gone
I met my wife on AOL, married 21 years. Still have my AOL email as my primary service.
Happy to hear that! My dad still has his aol email too after all these years.
Ha ha I met my wife on AOL too back in 1997. Still together as well. AOL email is long gone though. Have had Yahoo since the early 2000's, I don't think it has the same parameters as regular accounts do today.
I remember we would down load wav files of music bits, and go to chat rooms and talk, and play these music bits for how we were feeling. Only a few seconds long of course, but it was great, but each person had to have the file or the other couldn't hear it when you did the command in the chat room ha ha.
Dogs Life Don no way?! Lol! Wow!
Me too. I use mine every day.
LOL, I was on the computer while watching this and legitimately thought my internet had cut out with that last AOL “goodbye”. XD I guess that ingrained panic response has yet to extinguish.
Yeah my first thought was "CRAP!!!!" and my heart skipped a beat there. I recall my Dad who would use WebTV in his home theater, often kicking me off when he tried to connect. Wasn't a big deal, I would switch to the other phone line and redial. We had a phone line switcher for the PC just for this reason! Good times!
What I remember most about AOL is how many free months I'd get out of it just by calling to cancel the free trial. Every time, without fail, they'd offer 3 free months to see if I could be happier with the service. I got free AOL for a year and a half before they finally "allowed" me to cancel, lmfao!!
Free internet for a year and a half?! You are freaking genius! LOL 🤣
I did the same. Sirius XM is the modern day equivalent now.
Not going to lie, that AOL environment in the late 90s is super nostalgic for me
Same and I wasn't even alive back then
I hated when they went to CDs…. Before that it came on floppies…. They were a great source of free storage after you taped the read only hole
I thought I was the only one doing that
I still have a few kicking around. Worked like a dream
First Aol, 286 using DOS disk... hdd's werent even a thing.
I never used floppies. What's the "read only" hole? I'm guessing something that was suppose to stop you from using for other purposes.
@@456puff it was a standard thing they put on cassette tapes, vhs tapes and floppies to name a few. They usually had a tab that covered the hole so u could break it off if you wanted to make something read only…. But on official software from any company they didn’t include the tab….
AOL chatrooms was lightspeeds ahead any social media outlet
I preferred IRC at the time.
Fr people could spill the tea way faster by just going on aol then any person on social media could AOL chat was chaos 😂
😄 Yeah right, surely that's sarcasm. Nothing but a/s/l and random gibberish.
@@technomage6736 Not at all. Your freedom of speech wasn't infringed on
It’s humorous that most of the texting slang we use nowadays seems to have originated in aol chat or contemporaries.
I got my first computer in 1998 and just loved AOL and everything about it. I loved the chat rooms and made many friends locally here with real people in my area and actually got together with them. I miss AOL and enjoyed the computer so much more during the AOL days
Facebook destroyed everything
Same. Bought my first computer in 98 and AOL was my internet access until the early 2000s. Still use their e-mail
I remember AOL when they were sending out floppy discs, way before CDs. Those floppies could be formatted and used as actually useful storage media.
Same, it was great getting free floppy disks.
Same. I just got done posting a comment that we'd grab as many as the store would allow and re-format them.
I used to cut up the CDs and use them to scare critters out of my garden! I was cleaning out a bunch of stuff in a storage locker recently and found about 30 of the old discs.
wow i did this too!!!
I remember having 1000 AOL email address because we couldn’t afford to pay for the subscription🤣
Did you ever use AOL Hell to create fake banking account and credit card numbers?
Not many things really get me nostalgic, but the old AOL interface really hit me like a truck. I know it was anarchic by today's standards, but I have fond memories of having a bunch of windows of sites I browsed opened and the same time and splitting my focus between them all lol
I think you meant to use the word archaic.
@@theenzoferrari458 Yeah, I know the internet was/is a lawless place, but at least the interface has some semblance of order...
@@theenzoferrari458 Personally I think they both fit. Script kiddies roamed the chatrooms and there was little to no moderation many places. The internet is too controlled by algorithms and Puritans these days as well as being tuned to the lowest common denominator.
I still like the old AOL interface. It had some personality, which you don't really see on today's browsers.
Does anyone remember WebTV...where when it was dialing in and connecting, you saw a visual of little car riding on a road while it was connecting, and that bland music lol.
You kind of glossed over their history with Q-Link. The way they shut down Q-Link left a really bad taste in a lot of people's mouths. To this day I use the nickname "redrumloa" online as I have since about 1996 (read it backwards). There was a huge online archive of Commodore software that users begged AOL to allow them to back it up before shutting down, and AOL ignored them. There was a huge amount of Commodore software lost forever due to AOL's col actions.
Things like this, along with annoying and wasteful junkmail campaigns, made them have a huge built in badwill (opposite of goodwill). Old school users hated them for what they did to Q-Link. Power users found their platform remedial. Normies got annoyed with the daily junkmail advertisements they got that kept stacking up.
I had a super slow 1200 baud modem I bought for my C64 for $80 when I was 12 so I could go on Q-Link. Parents threw the modem in the trash after I ran up a $200 phone bill, since it costed $5 an hour. I was fascinated with Club Caribe, which was like a prototype of an MMO. Took me forever to save up for that modem at that age.
I remember the cultural hate toward AOL. Supposedly the AOL software on those discs acted as a sort of rootkit of the time as well and bogged down the system forever after being installed.
I thought people moved on from the c64 by than
Yeah, the company was souless and thats why they ultimately failed. They were fake and stupid.
I used AOL from their start and never even heard of Qlink before today
The sounds of "you got mail!" and dial up loading is like music to my ears!
Rusty Shackleford Good times! 😂😂
I remember getting the AOL floppies. Was awesome cause you could erase them and use them as regular floppies (aol be damned, i was on msn)
Lol, I remember feeling like such an elite hacker after figuring out how to punch a hole in the disk cover in order to allow you to overwrite them :D
Yup!
I still have a few in a shoebox back at my mom's place. They will be antiques someday.
@@InfectedChris they're antiques now!!
You briefly mentioned Netscape and broadband, but I think you didn't put enough emphasis on the rise of web browsers during that time, which made the whole idea of a portal completely obsolete.
You could still use other browsers with AOL but it was very inconvenient to have that resource hog AOL software running and not use it
Web Crawler 👈
@@a7x5631 yes it was simpler to just browse through AOL. Otherwise you'd still have to open AOL to connect, then go to your other browser.
Broadband allowed you to use those browser without an ISP like AOL.
@@hewitc So did pretty much every dial up provider that wasn't AOL
I worked for AOL for 10 yrs, when Steve Case was running the company it was a blast..then Time Warner took over and it all changed...I still have my AOL email..thanks for the memories AOL🙂
AIM was a fundamental part of my childhood.
Welcome!
You've got mail!
Goodbye!
Texting before we all had cell phones
Of course used AOL like everyone else . Problem was it was known as 90's dial up internet and never advanced with the times
I would have AIM and MSN Messenger on at the same time.. 😉
Remember those buddy icons?
i remember how hard it was to cancle AOL and having to wipe your computer to get the AOL software off it
Word. Took my mom 3 times to finally cancel our service. They were the absolute worst when it came to just cancelling the damned thing.
I had AOL from 1998 to 2009 & it only took 1 phone call & it was done 100%. Guess I was lucky.
AOL had "customer retention specialists" who absolutely would not cancel your service no matter how many hours you spent trying, finally had to close our bank account to be rid of them.
@@TheSimba86 it's because they got bonuses whenever they could retain a customer. the department was called "saves". I worked in tech support at the Albuquerque office for six months and when I put in my notice to quite, they took me over to that department and had me sit with them and listen in on calls to see if I would be interested in switching to the saves department. I declined even for a lot more money. They didn't want me to quit lol, it was just as hard to leave the job as it was to cancel your subscription.
So McAfee?
I thought they dropped the ball when they didn’t embrace high speed Internet.
And that was the beginning of their demise. I worked at AO Hell from 1999 to 2007 and had they embraced and become a leader in high speed rather than trying to latch onto other providers as an add-on, they'd still be a force today.
@@joecarlo3848 Thanks for confirming. I thought they should have embraced high speed internet and gaming. The Time Warner deal didn't make sense to me.
@@theBSisreal I was there from 95 to 99, trust me, the hesitation to go to broadband was definitely the reason. The merger was just the icing on the exploding cake.
@@iammojo75 What was their reason for not going with broadband?
@@theBSisreal absolute conviction that dial up would not ever go away entirely
It's fascinating to look back at where we've been so far in technology.
It was frustrating many times using AOL, but man, when you heard the “You’ve got Mail” voice, that was the best.
If only that guy got a dollar each time it used his voice he be rich .
"You may not even know what the Commodore 64 was..."
Oh, I know. It was awesome for its time.
Sorry I had a TRS80 Radio Shack
Lunar Lander
I used these when I was a kid. Then call them to cancel and theyd end up giving me 90 days free to change my mind. Rinse and repeat. Didnt pay for internet for almost 2 yrs
Lol I remember that
Lmaoo
Wait....how old were you at the time?
Did they ever realize what you were doing?
@@tktru 17. This was early 2000s
I remember my cousin knowing the "secret phone numbers" with an * at the beginning that was supposed to get you online faster during the dial-up days.
Chat room’s used to be lit. AOL was awesome when I would log in and had to put a blanket over the pc tower so my mom wouldn’t wake up and tell me to go to sleep at 3am
Everyone knew each other in the local regional chat. It was like a clique. The random, more friendly channels were the better ones. a/s/l?
You had a lot of people getting to know each other through the internet, too.
@North Star Ken
Yes, I made a LOT of friends on AOL!
I liked playing the annoying sound wavs, lol. Especially the welcome wav coz it played so long & everyone had to hear it.
Only 90s kids remember aol.
And only 2000s kids remember when they died.
I had America Online from 1995 - 1999. I ditched dial-up in 2000 when Bellsouth offered DSL in my area. Though, I did use AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) for years while on broadband. AOL not offering high-speed internet made them lose me as a customer.
You are becoming justin y
Why wouldn’t 2000s adults remember with their childhood died?
I still used aol up to like 2004-2005ish
@Adrock 99 not really, not at all. You came too late for this.
"...For many people watching this, the first time you ever went on the internet was through AOL."
I'm a little late for that train.
*laughs in 2600 baud modem*
@@Raskolnikov70 *beep boop bi duu sckrrrrrrrrr bi duu bi duuu shhhhhrrrrr*
Also, some people were smart enough to use superior alternatives, even at the time.
Comcast, masquerading as Earthlink, here (2000).
many, not all...
As a trucker back then and still, I'd have my phone cord in my laptop bag so I could plug in to the phone lines at the truck stop. back then, all the booths in the restaurants had phones.
When booting up AOL, it'd give you a list of phone numbers to select from. If one didnt work or took too long to load, you'd have to click a different one and start over. It was a PIA and slow, but technology was in its infancy, that's just the way it was.
I was impressed it worked at all, and even more impressed that we do the same thing now with a hand held phone! Incredible!!!!
The decline of yahoo! That’ll be an interesting one.
Yahoo is still relevant. AOL is not.
micah greene Only Yahoo Finance
Lloyd Almighty yahoo as a search engine and email, yahoo is still majorly relevant to me.
Don’t get me wrong, I love yahoo, but they have declined as a whole and as a brand.
Lloyd, it's still my start page and main email. Not my search though. Google reigns supreme for search.
@@micahgreene4573 Some people probably do still think that 🤣 Excellent use of sarcasm my friend
I remember going online for the first time in AOL at my mother's house on dial up over our landline phone. I also remember always receiving the AOL disk in my mailbox about once a week until it was over taken by cheaper broadband internet in the 2000's.
"You got mail!" "Goodbye" - AOL
Good times
I totally remember that so well and by Heart. I was just a Little Toddler when I Discovered all of that.
What I remember from AOL that irritated EVERYONE was the massive push of their AOL disks. As you stated, they were EVERYWHERE! It seemed that if you opened a can of Beans or your doctor performed surgery on you, there's an AOL disk inside! People were so fed up with these mass quantities of AOL disks that a group got together, rumored to have collected millions of disks, and then took them to AOL and dumped them at their doors. This was the public proclaiming 'ENOUGH ALREADY!' and from there AOL seemed to disintegrate into oblivion!
AOL Time Warner was one of the most disastrous mergers to ever happen. Hard to believe AOL still exists to this day.
They have a steady stream of revenue from people who autopaid on their credit card. Some have forgot to cancel, others think you need it to access the internet out of ignorance.
AT&T's takeover of Time Warner (now Warner Bros. Discovery) back in 2018 gets even worse.
Due to that merger we lost WCW
@@DennisTamayo AT&T buying Time Warner was incredibly disastrous, but the merger with Discovery seems to be helping them recover. David Zaslav knows where the company was crumbling and is busy turning things around.
AOL is one the email services people still use today
Those damn discs were attached to everything: Books, magazines, cereal boxes, toys, you name it, there was an AOL disc attached. It was like they were multiplying in retail environments...
amen it was truely abusive lol
The expansion of the internet was ultimately AOLs downfall. Their early niche was having local dialups all over the country - traveling business people could get their email anywhere (this was prior to the wide availability of internet access). Once the internet became available (and freely accessible in many locations), AOL lost its market edge. Their core services were easily replaced by other websites. It was a business model that ironically relied on a lack of internet access to succeed. The availability of ISPs would spell their end.
Yup. DSL was the first nail in the coffin that I remember.....
Your missing the point. Had aol combined with TWs Road Runner Service, the internet would be different than what it is today, maybe, but they missed out by letting TW hoe them out like that
How so? AOL was just a bunch of chat rooms and very basic content. Even with high speed access there was no reason for consumers to subscribe to AOL when they could get email and more expansive content from the broader internet
@@alant759 That's pretty much what I stated above. Their core services were easily replaced by other websites
Truer words have not been spoken. The non-technical people were led to believe that their only access to the internet was by way of services, Gopher, AOL, etc. Once people figured out that these services were nothing more than a bridge, they turned to other services provided by ISP's not reliant on front-end (or GUI) supported technologies.
Interestingly, AOL remains a small part of my life to this very day. I got a screen name for their messanger, and with it came an email address. I used that email address for certain types of communications. As time passed, AOL became a shell of its former self. No longer used for Internet access. Its messanger eventually died. But that email address was never shut down, and is still in use today. It's not something I really give much thought to, but now that I think about it, its rather interesting that I have a decades old email address from when I was a young girl that to this day has outlived virtually all other aspects of AOL.
Kids these days have no idea what “a/s/l?” means
Mostly because they aren't sure what age they are feeling today, what bathroom to use, and what location? Uhh how dare you ask what country I'm from racist!
Age, sex, location, easy. Nobody uses it, but we all know what it means.
Bingo the Pug well you sure know nothing about younger generations then, because nearly everyone uses it when talking to people online.
People still use it in omegle.
@@t900badbot how original
I was a user, it was my intro to the internet. I most remember the dial up sound, "youve got mail" and having to get off after only an hour or two because my mom needed to make a call. In high school, my friends and I all used AIM. It seemed like we had better conversations there than thru Facebook and all that came after
this is so true!
I've have this screen name for my childhood during those days.
I still have my old screen name since I was 19. Time flies...and yes, chatrooms were more lively back then. Now it is just simple emojis and abbreviated conversations.
They still have a future in the drink coaster business.
When the broadband service was connected to a dedicated ISP, that spelled the end of AOL with being the dominant ISP.
For those younger people out there: Back in the era of dialup, using existing landline phone connections, an internet user could select among dozens of ISPs. The one I used back then was by AT&T.
But with broadband landlines, they connected directly with the ISP the landlines went to, cutting out AOL as a ISP.
Funny you should mention ATT. When I lived in Lewiston ID (Which is a smaller city in the middle of nowhere), ATT took over the local cable provider around, if I remember correctly, '98 or '99. And with it, they brought in Broadband, which meant we were one of the first people in the country to have "High speed internet". Remember all the chats I had around 98/99 with people living in much bigger cities that still used Dial-up.
I remember spending hours on Ask Jeeves.
I remember AOL charging by the hour and I was always nervous about going over....I think my grandfather paid for 10 hours a month. HAHA could you imagine being charged by the hour today? SHEEEEEEESH. We are all online to some degree 24 hours a day
True. I don't have cable and I don't use that 50" TV i HAD to have in the living room unless i HDMI it to my laptop. I am on my computer all the time when I am not at work and haven't found anything I can't do or watch online. in 10 years cable will be a thing of the past, right up there with the phone on the wall.
Really? I didn't think anybody ever really paid for it. Every day we'd just get another disk with "2 Million Free Hours", change our account info and move on. I always assumed it was run by the NSA and they didn't really need money.
Maybe if charged by the hour some people would be able to break their cellphone addictions and stop looking at the phones 24/7. Ever watch families dine together? They are all looking at the phones the whole meal.
Omg that “Good-bye” scared me lmao
I remember the AOL online games. Those were lit. Chat rooms, AIM. "The good ol' days" as they say. My kids take things for granted when the internet stream dips below 100MB/s lol I tell them we used to only have one online device and we couldn't make phone calls while we were using it. I sometimes wish we could go back to those days just to learn to appreciate life a bit more.
lit.?
It feels like Verizon has bought ever company you have talked about in the downfall series.
Last time I was this early, I was still receiving AOL discs in the mail.
oh the amount of those that were in circulation
*Floppies
@@timotheus2003 I remember those too!
nothing like a free coaster in the mail
Ah yes, the free shuriken you used for playing pretend ninja turtles.
Good times.
I do agree that AOL & Time Warner merge was a disaster. I know that from WCW’s failure.
The worst thing about that merger to me
Still sore till today
My dad was a systems engineer, so I grew up with a nerd dad and plenty of computers to tinker with. Perhaps because he worked for a communications company, we were a "local ISP" household rather than an AOL-subscribing one. I don't even think it was around yet, as I remember a number of years of early Internet (well, World Wide Web) use prior to the boom of AOL's popularity. Most of my friends (who even owned computers to begin with) would just stick with AOL. We used to poke fun at it, Internet for n00bs and all that, but I still have really fond memories of the impact it had on late 90s subculture.
You a nerd just like your Dad.
When I ask for an email at work and someone says “@aol” I’m like 😮🤨
This is gonna be a long e-sign. Had one the other day: Barbara@aol.com THE FIRST BARBARA
@@Dadplusloans I got fucking aol email that I made couple of years ago with my first and last name because fucking Gmail didn't have my chosen name available.
Hahah I still have aol.com my dad setup for me 20 years ago
@@the_uglysteve6933 Really? That's very cool
@@the_uglysteve6933 still got mine too. I created it when I was in 6th grade which was 1998. I use it too. In fact I have the AOL app just to check my email. I also have google but I rarely use it.
I still use Aol as my primary email and my boyfriend constantly picks on me about it 😂
Me too. But I can’t get anyone to use my other email. So I gave in.
I still use my aol email too, had this bad boy since ‘97! 😂
@@ZapdosVz same here
@@ZapdosVz 24 years, jeeez I'm not even that old yet
So does Hilary Clinton don’t worry about it
Remember when you had to have two lines, and if you didn't you couldn't receive calls when you were on the net? lol
I had internet call waiting instead of a second line
My got two phone lines my brother and I would dual modem when she wasn't home , to have a faster connection speeds. lol
With call waiting and a fancy answering machine you could kind of screen the calls. I even had a fax machine that monitored incoming calls and used the handshake to take the call away from the answering machine. The 90s :-)
With call waiting and a fancy answering machine you could kind of screen the calls. I even had a fax machine that monitored incoming calls and used the handshake to take the call away from the answering machine. The 90s :-)
Remember aol mail my use iPhone iPad iPod touch mc book
Right now at my house point
I worked for Warner Bros. during the acquisition by AOL and it was horrible. They made is switch from MS outlook to AOL mail, which is definitely not for business/corporate use. I remember there was a pop up asking me if I wanted to order ink cartridges every time I'd print an email. After 5 months of that mail fiasco, they let us switch back to outlook. And many of us were angry that the only reason they were able to buy Time Warner was because of the huge run up in their stock price. Like what did a dial up internet provider know about running an Media Entertainment Company? Worst acquisition in history!!!
I remember AOL. The dial up sound and you’ve got mail.
I was an AOL customer back in the 1990's, I remember the sound waiting to get connected by way of a 56k dial-up modem. AOL messed up with Time Warner, they could have been where Google is today.
I use to love the AOL chat rooms. That was the first way I ever met someone online. Online dating was super taboo back then. We’re still friends to this day.
zonefour same here
A/S/L ?
Shotzy Brown lol
I never used an AOL chat room but AIM was a big thing back then even when you met people on other sites.
Cool
I realized that AOL was an unnecessary middleman when all I wanted to do was surf the web.
haha yes, we werent scared of manual isp setup
That is exactly what caused the downfall. Everyone was new to this "internet" idea and didn't know. Maybe there were always other options. Maybe not. But the second other companies started marketing options, AOL was no longer necessary.
Yeah, you sure are right. People thought AOL was the only way to get access to the net. The bonus was having the central hub that was AOL. Once people found yahoo, and cheaper dial up providers what incentive did people have to stick with aol? They really dropped the ball by not being more aggressive when it came to combining road runner with their services.
I miss those days, I hate days now, much simpler times...
9 year old me definitely thought AOL was the entire landscape of the internet for some time
I actually met a person in a random chat room one day in the very early days of AOL and we continued meeting online to chat and hit it off. I think I was 12 at the time. We would talk on the phone periodically and when I was a senior in high school I called her up when I was in town. She ended up coming to my graduation that year and that was the first time I had ever seen her. We dated for a short time but it didn’t work out…At first.
Fast forward 6 more years and she came to a concert to see me and we hit it off again like we’d never stopped talking. We’ve been happily married 15 years and have two kids together, the oldest being older than me when I “met” my wife. Unreal.
Worst corporate merger of all time ?
* laughs in AT&T Time Warner *
I wonder what AT&T would have done with AOL if it were still part of Time Warner when they bought them?
“That crappy dial-up thing? I thought that was for nerds.” - Quagmire
People picking up the phone while you were in the middle downloading 1 song that took 2 hrs....good ole days
I was smart. I had a second line installed just for the computer. I used to give out the number of the second line for any company that asked for my phone number but had no business having it. They could call that number all they wanted, they'd never get an answer.
I felt this
It's such a shame about AOL. They could have easily been an absolute giant to this day, but they allowed themselves to become the Blockbuster of internet providers: irrelevant and outdated.
I was a teenager in the 90s and I remember when AOL was LIFE!!! 😂😂😂
ASL?
Those chat rooms were like my second home :)
Last time I was this early, I could go outside without dying.
🤣
Shut up and eat your toilet paper soup.
Wait... so you were never early???
@@Raskolnikov70 lmaoooo Stop it!!🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
Who else got excited when a new version of AOL was released and then you had to wait 2 hours for it to update it, but it was worth it to see the new design?
I know this is 3 years later, but heck yeah! Even the discs were cool. Truly good times. Funny how standards changed so drastically
@@swagmuffin9000 Yeah, there was some fun and style to it.
I was an AOL user when I was a child, but grew up reading AOL published blogs and the like. I think people would be surprised how big AOL was as a internet news publisher.
To this day, the dial-up, modem sound still turns me on.
I have it as my dial tone
AIM was the reason I can type fast to this day. My chat game was strong, thanks AOL.
9:28
Gen Z and Alpha: Alien noises?
Boomers, Gen X, Millenials: Ah, takes me back...
I'am gen z an I'm like take me to a time I don't exist
@@FreshInkling That......sounds more sad then I'm sure you didn't mean to be.
I slapped a layer of duct tape over the damn 56k modem speaker so I could go online at 3am without waking up the house.
@@madisonatteberry9720 nope it's not a sad for what I mean
I barely remember dial up noises. We had dial up until 2008. I was 7 when we switched.
I remember as a teen in 1995 I was at a friend of a friend's house, and the girl pointed to her computer and asked me, "hey you wanna get on the internet?" And I must've had the blankest black hole of a dumbass stare humanly possible. I didn't know what TF this person just said to me lol.
I still remember the first time I was introduced to the internet via Netscape Navigator and a website called Yahoo! I was friggin mesmerized. What is this sorcery and do you mind if I sit here for a few hours and type stuff in?
@@danejurus69 OMG netscape! yes. that was my one and only browser for years.
My introduction to the Internet happened in middle school. I had a book report to do over the weekend and needed to check out a few books from the school library. While I was walking through the shelves, I came upon a few Asian kids who were using the Internet to download images of DragonBall Z characters. Simultaneously, this was my introduction to anything anime. I asked him how he was making the images appear and who were the characters. Life was never the same.
To be fair, computers weren't as ubiquitous in 95.
She Probably had a Crush on you which means she Probably liked you.
Trust me AOL and Time Warner should never have came together R.I.P WCW
"It was seen as the worst corporate merger ever."
At&t: Hold my beer
Daimler Chrysler: Hold my Lowenbrau
@@jamesstuart3346 Fiat Chrysler- Hold my Peroni
@@slowstang88 Chrysler - Bankruptcy: No drinking in the courtroom
John oliver would agree with this.
MciWorldcom buying UUnet screwed it all up! I was a very happy UUnet dude back in the day!
"Here's where things went bad...it started when Time-Warner became involved." AHHH, a story as old as time. I think that's how some of Grimm's fairy tales began, until they changed it to "Once upon a time..." for copyright reasons.
I still use my AOL email account because it’s been linked up to so many things that were set up 20 years ago. At least half of my pass code links go through AOL. If AOL ever dropped their email service I’ve had one hell of a problem accessing things if I forgot my password.
I still remember the chatrooms. A/S/L. 😂😂😂😂