A service that once connected millions of users to the World Wide Web will soon be shutting down for good.
In an undated note to users seemingly published within the last week or two, AOL (America Online) announced that it will cease dial-up internet services on September 30th. The company had provided these services for 34 years.
If you’re anything like me, your earliest memories of spending significant time using a computer and the internet in general likely began on AOL. I met some of my longest “internet friends” by jumping into public chat rooms that revolved around mutual interests or were specifically tailored to teenagers who were roughly around the same age at the time. Honestly, with as often as I spent time online as opposed to socializing with people from high school, you could even say that I learned how to socialize on AOL. And maybe more importantly, in some circumstances, how not to socialize.
If you can’t exactly relate or are too young to have been on the internet during the days of dial-up, let me put it to you this way: Millions of people used AOL to access the internet. In fact, according to some statistics about AOL, its peak user base was 35 million people and, in 1999, was worth $222 billion. At the height of the AOL craze, the company even bought out the massive media conglomerate Time Warner (as disastrous as that deal turned out to be) for $182 billion. It was enormously successful, and I personally believe that one could even say it is responsible for popularizing and pioneering the internet in America. The acceptance and adoption of online culture began with AOL.
Even though the screeching of a dial-up modem connecting to the internet sounded like some kind of demon being cast out of your PC equipment, it’s still one of the classic sounds that transports AOL users back in time. And there was nothing better than successfully signing onto your account and hearing AOL greet you with its warm “Welcome!” followed by everyone’s three favorite words: “You’ve got mail.” That short but sweet notification was so influential that it spawned a Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan romcom of the same name back then!
Despite all of this, AOL’s misfortune started not long after the acquisition of Time Warner. Insider business decisions eventually led to Time Warner casting AOL out by 2003. Furthermore, the company saw shrinking numbers once dial-up started falling into disuse as users began favoring easier and faster broadband connections. I mean, who could blame us? Nobody wanted to wait 15 minutes for their internet connection to start up when they could just as easily sign onto a PC that was always connected. Especially once those upstart services started offering unlimited access, which ate into AOL’s model of selling their service hourly. And by 2017, the writing was truly on the wall, as AOL shut down the spinoff of its popular chat services, AOL Instant Messenger (AIM).
Truthfully, not many were aware that AOL’s dial-up services were still available, as they were. I, myself, had personally thought AIM’s shutdown was the end of AOL’s dusty vestiges, outside of its free homepage and email services. Apparently, per CNBC’s Alex Sherman, there are only users in the “low thousands” still relying on AOL’s dial-up internet. The recent announcement that they would be shutting it down at the end of September, though, brought on the same wave of nostalgia for me that the closing of AIM brought. Reminiscing about chatting and making friends with people hundreds or thousands of miles away. People that I would never have had the opportunity to meet otherwise. There was something special about the internet back in those days. And while the technology has gotten harder, better, faster, stronger… We’re still here, and so is the internet that AOL helped build.
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