America OnLine was an Internet service provider, like Cox or Qwest or any of the others. They sent discs out to you with the software on it to install. They charged you a monthly fee just like the cable companies do now. They are quite known for their discs because they sent million upon millions of them out. They were everywhere. Every store had them. They were free to take.

They were giant in the 90's. It was what they called a walled garden. You signed on and then it presented you with a window. In that window were icons for your mail and messages and web browsing. Everything always done in this window. There was no need to use a regular web browser like Internet Explorer or Firefox. Everything was done in this AOL window. Part of the problem was they would filter the web as well. So it wasn't quite always the real Internet. It was good for people just getting started online though.

Not sure of what they are doing today though. They are still around but j think they are more of just email providers now but I may be mistaken on that.

cerebrogasm: 11 months ago via iPhone

Man, I'm getting old - I remember my first net account was pre-AOL - remember "CompuServe"? Before that all we had was our university's net access - basic TCP/IP.

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LC81055: 11 months ago

thanks

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It's a emailing site.

LC81055: 11 months ago

tanks

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Email

LC81055: 11 months ago

thanks

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America on line. ;)

LC81055: 11 months ago

ok i'm not american thanks

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mel628: 11 months ago via iPhone

Lol. You don't have to be American.

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it's aol radio ,where u can listen awesome songs online

LC81055: 11 months ago

really? everyone says it is email so i need to know witch ones right and which ones
wrong

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Almost over limit.

AOL basically owned the net - you got a free disk and loaded their software onto your computer - attached a modem - and plugged your telephone cord into the modem - when you logged on - you'd hear a scream as your computer "talked" to one of AOL's modems - which were connected to AOL servers - which were connected to the actual Internet. The problem was you had to go through AOL to access data sites - which means AOL acted as a kind of censor. Then came HTML and the first browser: Netscape / Mozilla - AOL was so filthy rich they bought Time-Warner (yes, the movie and media giant). That all disappeared with the invention of the web - which is basically servers (computers able to trade data with a lot of incoming requests) that "spoke" HTML to web browsers - all of the work in creating windows and formatting text is done by the web browser in your computer - servers just send the descriptions. Microsoft introduced Internet Explorer, then came others like Chrome, Opera, and Firefox. A toy running language called "JavaScript" was incorporated into servers and browsers, along with audio and video technologies. AOL faded into the dust.