AOL

AOL LLC. (formerly TWC.) is an American global Internet services and media company operated by Time Warner.

AOL is based in Dulles, Virginia. With regional branches around the world, the former American "goliath among Internet service providers"[2] once had more than 30 million subscribers[2] on several continents. In January 2000, AOL and Time Warner announced plans to merge. The terms of the deal negotiated called for AOL shareholders to own 55% of the new, combined company. The deal closed on January 11, 2001 after receiving regulatory approval from the FTC, the FCC and the European Union.

America Online, Inc., as the company was then called, was led by executives from both AOL and Time Warner. Gerald Levin, who had served as CEO of Time Warner, was CEO of the new company. Steve Case served as Chairman, J. Michael Kelly (from AOL) was the Chief Financial Officer, Robert W. Pittman (from AOL) and Dick Parsons (from Time Warner) served as Co-Chief Operating Officers. The total value of AOL stock subsequently plummeted from about $226 billion to about $20 billion.[3]Similarly, its customer base has decreased to 13 million subscribers as of December 2006, just narrowly ahead of Comcast and AT&T Yahoo.

AOL is a company in transition, made evident by discussions of buy-outs and joint ventures during a period of dramatic decline in AOL's subscriber base.[2] News reports in late 2005 identified companies such as Yahoo!, Microsoft, and Google as candidates for turning AOL into a joint venture;[4] those plans were apparently abandoned when it was revealed on December 20, 2005 that Google would purchase a 5% share of AOL for $1 billion.

AOL is also one of the worst voted internet suppliers in a poll by BBC Watchdog. On March 31, 1997, the short lived eWorld was purchased by AOL, forcing the 115,000 users to subscribe to AOL. The ISP side of AOL UK was bought by The Carphone Warehouse in October 2006 to take advantage of their 100,000 LLU's, which makes The Carphone Warehouse the biggest LLU provider in the UK, enabling them to offer broadband at no charge to 90% of their TalkTalk Talk3 customers

AOL began as a short-lived venture called Quantum Computer Services (or QCS), founded by William von Meister. Its sole product was an online service called Gameline for the Atari 2600 video game console after von Meister's idea of buying music on demand was rejected by Warner Brothers. (Klein, 2003) Subscribers bought a modem from the company for $49.95 and paid a one-time $15 setup fee. Gameline permitted subscribers to temporarily download games and keep track of high scores, at a cost of approximately $1 per hour.

In 1983, the company nearly went bankrupt, and an investor in Control Video, Frank Caufield, had a friend of his, Jim Kimsey, brought in as a manufacturing consultant. That same year, Steve Case joined the company as a full-time marketing employee upon the joint recommendations of von Meister and Kimsey. Kimsey went on to become the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the newly renamed Quantum Computer Services in 1985, after von Meister was quietly dropped from the company.

Case himself rose quickly through the ranks; Kimsey promoted him to vice-president of marketing not long after becoming CEO, and later promoted him further to executive vice-president in 1987. Kimsey soon began to groom Case to ascend to the rank of CEO, which he did when Kimsey retired in 1991.

Kimsey changed the company's strategy, and in 1985 launched a sort of mega-BBS for Commodore 64 and 128 computers, originally called Quantum Link ("Q-Link" for short). The Quantum Link software was licensed from PlayNet, Inc. In May 1988, Quantum and Apple launched AppleLink Personal Edition for Apple II and Macintosh computers. After the two companies parted ways in October 1989, Quantum changed the service's name to America Online.[6][7] In August 1988, Quantum launched PC Link, a service for IBM-compatible PCs developed in a joint venture with the Tandy Corporation.


Logo was used in Europe between 2005-2006. Now most European AOL Websites use the same logo as AOL USA and AOL Canada.From the beginning, AOL included online games in its mix of products; many classic and casual games were included in the original PlayNet software system. In the early years of AOL the company introduced many additional innovative online interactive titles and games, including:

Graphical chat environments Habitat (1986-1988) and Club Caribe (1988) from LucasArts.
The first online interactive fiction series QuantumLink Serial by Tracy Reed (1988).
Quantum Space, the first fully automated Play by email game (1989-1991).
The original Dungeons & Dragons title Neverwinter Nights from Stormfront Studios (1991-1997), the first Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game (MMORPG) to depict the adventure with graphics instead of text (1991).
The first chat room-based text role-playing game Black Bayou (1996-2004), a horror role-playing game from Hecklers Online and ANTAGONIST, Inc..
In February 1991 AOL for DOS was launched using a GeoWorks interface followed a year later by AOL for Windows. In October 1991, Quantum changed its name to America Online. These changes coincided with growth in pay-based BBS services, like Prodigy, CompuServe, and GEnie. AOL discontinued Q-Link and PC Link in the fall of 1994.


[edit] Massive growth
Case positioned AOL as the online service for people unfamiliar with computers, in particular contrast to CompuServe, which had long served the technical community. The PlayNet system that AOL licensed was the first online service to require use of proprietary software, rather than a standard terminal program; as a result it was able to offer a graphical user interface (GUI) instead of command lines, and was well ahead of the competition in emphasizing communication among members as a feature.

In particular was the Chat Room concept from PlayNet, as opposed to the previous paradigm of CB-style channels. Chat Rooms allowed a large group of people with similar interests to convene and hold conversations in real time, including:

Private rooms - created by any user. Hold up to 27 people.
Conference rooms - created with permission of AOL. Hold up to 48 people and often moderated.
Auditoriums - created with permission of AOL. Consisted of a stage and an unlimited number of rows. What happened on the stage was viewable by everybody in the auditorium but what happened within individual rows, of up to 27 people, was viewable only by the people within those rows.
There were also text games played in the chat rooms, known as AOL chatroom games.[citation needed]

In March 1994, AOL added access to USENET to the features it offered.

AOL quickly surpassed GEnie, and by the mid-1990s, it passed Prodigy (which for several years allowed AOL advertising) and CompuServe.

Originally, AOL charged its users an hourly fee, but in 1996 this changed and a flat rate of $19.99 a month was charged. Within three years, AOL's userbase grew to 10 million people. During this time, AOL connections would be flooded with users trying to get on, and many canceled their accounts due to constant busy signals. Also, games which used to be paid for with the hourly fee migrated in droves to the Internet.[citation needed]

AOL was quickly running out of room in 1996 for its network at the Vienna, VA campus and moved to Dulles, VA a short distance away. The move to the Dulles took place in 1997 and provided room for future growth.

AOL was relatively late in providing access to the open Internet. Originally, only some Internet features were accessible through a proprietary interface but eventually it became possible to run other Internet software while logged in through AOL. They were the first online service to seamlessly integrate a web browser into content.[citation needed]

AOL introduced the concept of Buddy Lists, leveraging their one-on-one instant messaging technology.[citation needed]


Change in focus
Since its merger with Time Warner, the value of AOL has dropped from its $200 billion high. It has seen similar losses among its subscription rate. It has since attempted to reposition itself as a content provider similar to companies such as Yahoo! as opposed to an Internet service provider which delivered content only to subscribers in what was termed a "walled garden". In 2005, AOL broadcasted the Live 8 concert live over the Internet, and thousands of users downloaded clips of the concert over the following months.

In 2004 along with the launch of AOL 4.0 optimized, AOL also made available the option of personalized greetings. Which would enable the user to hear his or her name while accessing basic functions, mail alerts and logging in or out. America Online users can access the greetings recorded by the female voice of Patricia Walden or the male voice of Chris Kepics (http://chriskepics.googlepages.com) by installing version 9.0 optimized which can be done online by going to AOL Keyword: Upgrade. Once the user is running the current program, go to Keyword: Event Sounds, then select "Change" and "Add Your Name" to access the voices.

AOL eventually announced plans to offer subscribers classic television programs for free with commercials inserted via its new IN2TV service. At the time of launch, AOL made available Warner Bros. Television's vast library of programs, with Welcome Back Kotter as its marquee offering. Other shows include Scarecrow and Mrs. King, The F.B.I., F Troop, and Growing Pains.[citation needed]

In 2006, AOL informed its American customers that it would be increasing the price of its dial-up access to $25.90. The increase was part of an effort to migrate the service's remaining dial-up users to broadband, as the increased price was the same price they had been charging for monthly DSL access.[8] However, AOL has started offering their services for $9.95 a month for unlimited dial-up access.[9]

On April 3, 2006, AOL announced that the full name "America Online" will be retired, and that the official name of the service is now "AOL".[10]

On August 2, 2006, AOL announced that they will give away e-mail accounts and software previously available only to its paying customers in a strategy shift likely to accelerate the decline in its core Internet access business. The decision removes the few remaining reasons for many AOL subscribers to keep paying when they already have high-speed Internet access through a cable or phone company. AOL hopes that by making services free, it can draw Internet users to its ad-supported Web sites and keep them from defecting to Microsoft and Yahoo!, which have offered free e-mail for years.


Controversies
Being named #1 in PC World's list of the 25 worst tech products of all time,[11] AOL has been involved in many controversies.

Community leaders
Prior to mid 2005, AOL used volunteers called Community Leaders, or CLs, to monitor chatrooms, message boards, and libraries. Some community leaders were recruited for content design and maintenance using a proprietary language and interface called RAINMAN, although most content maintenance was performed by partner and internal employees.

In 1999, a class action lawsuit was filed against AOL citing violations of U.S. labor laws in its usage of CLs. The Department of Labor investigated but came to no conclusions, closing their investigation in 2001. In light of these events, AOL began drastically reducing the responsibilities and privileges of its volunteers in 2000. The program was eventually ended on June 8, 2005. Current Community Leaders at the time were offered 12 months of credit on their accounts.


Billing disputes
AOL has faced a number of lawsuits over claims that it has been slow to stop billing people after their accounts have been cancelled, either by the company or the user. In addition, AOL changed its method of calculating used minutes in response to a class action lawsuit. Previously, AOL would add fifteen seconds to the time a user was connected to the service and round up to the next whole minute (thus, a person who used the service for 11 minutes and 46 seconds would be charged for 13 minutes). AOL claimed this was to account for sign on/sign off time, but because this practice was not made known to its customers, the plaintiffs won (some also pointed out that signing on and off did not always take 15 seconds, especially when connecting via another ISP). AOL disclosed its connection time calculation methods to all of its customers and credited them with extra free hours. In addition, the AOL software would notify the user of exactly how long they were connected and how many minutes they were being charged.[citation needed]


Account cancellation
In response to approximately 300 consumer complaints, then-New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer’s office began an inquiry of AOL’s customer service policies. The investigation revealed that the company had an elaborate scheme for rewarding employees who purported to retain or "save" subscribers who had called to cancel their Internet service. In many instances, such retention was done against subscribers’ wishes, or without their consent. Under the scheme, consumer service personnel received bonuses worth tens of thousands of dollars if they could successfully dissuade or "save" half of the people who called to cancel service. For several years, AOL had instituted minimum retention or "save" percentages, which consumer representatives were expected to meet. These bonuses, and the minimum "save" rates accompanying them, had the effect of employees not honoring cancellations, or otherwise making cancellation unduly difficult for consumers.

Many customers complained that AOL personnel ignored their demands to cancel service and stop billing. On August 24, 2005, America Online agreed to pay $1.25 million to the state of New York and reformed its customer service procedures. Under the agreement, AOL will no longer require its customer service representatives to meet a minimum quota for customer retention in order to receive a bonus. However, many AOL users outside New York still claim to have problems canceling their accounts.

On June 13, 2006, a man named Vincent Ferrari documented his account cancellation phone call in a blog post, stating he had switched to broadband years earlier. In the recorded phone call, the AOL representative refused to cancel the account unless the 30-year-old Ferrari explained why AOL hours were still being recorded on it. Ferrari insisted that AOL software was not even installed on the computer. When Ferrari demanded that the account be canceled regardless, the AOL representative asked to speak with Ferrari's father, for whom the account had been set up. The conversation was aired on CNBC. When CNBC reporters tried to have an account on AOL cancelled, they were hung up on immediately and it ultimately took more than 45 minutes to cancel the account. AOL eventually fired the representative who had spoken to Ferrari and issued an apology.[12]

On July 19, 2006, AOL's entire retention manual was released on the Internet. [1] (7MB PDF).

On August 3, 2006, Time Warner announced that the company would be dissolving AOL's retention centers due to its profits hinging on $1 billion in cost cuts. The company estimates that it will lose more than six million subscribers over the next year. [2]

Currently, Free Account members who try to cancel their accounts, via AOL Keyword "cancel", are only redirected to a website allowing them to choose from three different paid membership plans, making it difficult to cancel the account.


Software
In 2000, AOL was served with an $8 billion lawsuit alleging that its (now outdated) AOL 5.0 software caused significant difficulties for users attempting to use third-party Internet service providers. The lawsuit sought damages of up to $1000 for each user that had downloaded the software cited at the time of the lawsuit. AOL later agreed to a settlement of $15 million, without admission of wrongdoing. Now, the AOL software has a feature called AOL Dialer, or AOL Connect on Mac OS X. This feature allows users to connect to the ISP without running the full interface. This allows users to use only the applications they wish to use, especially if they do not favor the AOL Browser.

Usenet newsgroups
When AOL gave clients access to Usenet in 1993, they hid at least one newsgroup in standard list view: alt.aol-sucks. AOL did list the newsgroup in the alternative description view, but changed the description to "Flames and complaints about America Online". With AOL clients swarming Usenet newsgroups, the old, existing user base started to develop a strong distaste for both AOL and its clients, referring to the new state of affairs as Eternal September.

] Terms of Service (TOS)
There have been many complaints over rules that govern AOL's members conduct, called the Terms of Service, which apply to everyone who uses AOL, regardless of age, or where an AOL member is on the Internet. Claims are that these rules are too strict to follow (many find AOL's authority to change these terms at any given time and without warning particularly troublesome).[Who?] TOS is known as COS (conditions of service) in the UK.

Certified e-mail
In early 2005, AOL stated its intention to implement certified e-mail, which will allow companies to send email to users with whom they have pre-existing business relationships, with a visual indication that the email is from a trusted source and without the risk that the email messages might be blocked or stripped by spam filters. This decision has drawn fire from MoveOn, which characterizes the program as an "e-mail tax". Esther Dyson defended the move in a New York Times editorial saying "I hope Goodmail succeeds, and that it has lots of competition. I also think it and its competitors will eventually transform into services that more directly serve the interests of mail recipients. Instead of the fees going to Goodmail and EON, they will also be shared with the individual recipients."[13]

Search data release
Main article: AOL search data scandal
On August 4, 2006, AOL released a compressed text file on one of its websites containing twenty million search keywords for over 650,000 users over a 3-month period between March 1, 2006 and May 31, intended for research purposes. AOL pulled the file from public access by August 7, but not before its wide distribution on the Internet by others. Derivative research, titled "A Picture of Search" was published by authors Pass, Chowdhury and Torgeson for The First International Conference on Scalable Information Systems.

This data is being used by Web sites such as AOLstalker for entertainment purposes, where users of AOLstalker are encouraged to judge AOL clients based on the humorousness of personal details revealed by search behavior.