AOL



AOL Inc. (previously known as America Online, written as AOL and styled as "Aol." but commonly pronounced as an initialism) is a multinational mass media corporation based in New York City that develops, grows, and invests in brands and web sites.[4] The company's business spans digital distribution of content, products, and services, which it offers to consumers, publishers, and advertisers.

Founded in 1983 as Control Video Corporation, an online services company by Jim Kimsey from the remnants of Control Video Corporation, AOL has franchised its services to companies in several nations around the world or to set up international versions of its services.[5] AOL is headquartered at 770 Broadway in New York[6] [7] but has many offices in cities throughout North America. Its global offices include Bangalore, India; Dreieich, Germany; Dublin, Ireland; London, United Kingdom; and Tel Aviv, Israel. As of October 2012, it serves 2.9 million paid and free domestic (US) subscribers.[8]

AOL is best known for its online software suite, also called AOL, that allowed customers to access the world's largest "walled garden" online community and eventually reach out to the Internet as a whole. At its peak, AOL's membership was over 30 million members worldwide,[9] most of whom accessed the AOL service through the AOL software suite. AOL was ranked fourth (behind the Web, email, and graphic user interfaces) in a 2007 USA Today retrospective on the 25 events that shaped the first 25 years of the Internet[10] and was named to the ".com 25" by a panel of Silicon Valley influencers on the occasion of the same anniversary.[11]

In 2000, AOL and Time Warner merged under the name AOL Time Warner. The merger was not fruitful and on May 28, 2009, Time Warner announced that it would spin off AOL into a separate public company. The spinoff occurred on December 9, 2009,[12] ending the eight-year relationship between the two companies.[13]

Since then, AOL has begun to substantially change its business model reinventing itself as a brand company under the guidance of CEO Tim Armstrong, creating and acquiring a range of content properties. Major acquisitions include the purchase of technology news blog TechCrunch in September 2010,[14] and on February 7, 2011, the purchase of The Huffington Post.[15] Other AOL brands include Moviefone, Engadget, Patch Media, Stylelist, MapQuest and Cambio.[16]

CDs
AOL has sent CDs to your house daily from 1993 to 2005. While most were that stupid AOL logo, sometimes you would get a beautiful design. All of that stopped in 2005.

Internet Options
AOL offers Dial-up and broadband connections.