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110-469: Netscape stock traded from 1995 until 1999 when the company was acquired by AOL in a pooling-of-interests transaction ultimately worth US$ 10 billion. In February 1998, approximately one year prior to its acquisition by AOL, Netscape released the source code for its browser and created the Mozilla Organization to coordinate future development of its product. The Mozilla Organization rewrote

220-668: A Catholic high school, she earned a degree in Communications , with minors in Sociology and English , from University of the Pacific and began her career in journalism and television . In the early 1990s, Siino began advising Jim Clark at SGI . She was a key founding team member for Netscape, creating the Netscape brand and lifting the company into high public visibility. She is responsible for creating and initiating

330-609: A completely different user experience based on which site they were on. Examples are handling of right-to-left or bi-directional text, user interface widgets, bugs and web standards violations in Trident, etc. On top of this, Netscape Browser 8 even broke Internet Explorer's ability to open XML files by damaging a Windows Registry key, and would do so every time it was opened, even if the user fixed it manually. AOL's acquisition of Netscape Communications in November 1998 made it less of

440-419: A compressed format to increase effective speeds up to 1300 kbit/s (average 500 kbit/s). The Internet service provider was later run by Verizon under the Netscape brand. The low-cost ISP was officially launched on January 8, 2004. Netscape drove much traffic from various links included in the browser menus to its web properties. Some say it was very late to leverage this traffic for what would become

550-484: A cost of $ 1 per game. The telephone disconnected and the downloaded game would remain in GameLine's Master Module, playable until the user turned off the console or downloaded another game. In January 1983, Steve Case was hired as a marketing consultant for Control Video on the recommendation of his brother, investment banker Dan Case. In May 1983, Jim Kimsey became a manufacturing consultant for Control Video, which

660-433: A deal valued at $ 4.4 billion. The transaction was completed on June 23. Armstrong , who continued to lead the firm following regulatory approval, called the deal the logical next step for AOL. "If you look forward five years, you're going to be in a space where there are going to be massive, global-scale networks, and there's no better partner for us to go forward with than Verizon." he said. "It's really not about selling

770-512: A diagnostic tool to monitor and rate PC security status, and recommended additional security software from AOL or Download.com . Two months later, AOL released AOL Active Virus Shield , a free product developed by Kaspersky Lab , that did not require an AOL account, only an internet email address. The ISP side of AOL UK was bought by Carphone Warehouse in October 2006 to take advantage of its 100,000 LLU customers, making Carphone Warehouse

880-399: A digital documentary series focusing on high-achieving women in industries perceived as male-dominated such as war, comedy, space, business, Hollywood and politics. Subjects for MAKERS episodes have included Oprah Winfrey , Hillary Clinton , Sheryl Sandberg , Martha Stewart , Indra Nooyi , Lena Dunham and Ellen DeGeneres . On March 15, 2012, AOL announced the acquisition of Hipster,

990-486: A drop in adjusted OIBDA due to increased investments in the company's video and programmatic platforms. On June 29, 2015, AOL announced a deal with Microsoft to take over the majority of its digital advertising business. Under the pact, as many as 1,200 Microsoft employees involved with the business will be transferred to AOL, and the company will take over the sale of display, video, and mobile ads on various Microsoft platforms in nine countries, including Brazil, Canada,

1100-471: A higher priority on adding new features than on making their products work properly. Netscape experienced its first bad quarter at the end of 1997 and underwent a large round of layoffs in January 1998. Former Netscape executives Mike Homer and Peter Currie have described this period as "hectic and crazy" and that the company was undone by factors both internal and external. In January 1998, Netscape started

1210-493: A joint venture. Those plans were abandoned when it was revealed on December 20, 2005, that Google would purchase a 5% share of AOL for $ 1 billion. On April 3, 2006, AOL announced that it would retire the full name America Online. The official name of the service became AOL, and the full name of the Time Warner subdivision became AOL LLC . On June 8, 2006, AOL offered a new program called AOL Active Security Monitor,

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1320-581: A legal challenge from the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (makers of NCSA Mosaic ), which many of Netscape's founders used to develop, led to the name Netscape Navigator. The company's name also changed from Mosaic Communications Corporation to Netscape Communications Corporation. The browser was easily the most advanced available and so was an instant success, becoming a market leader while still in beta. Netscape's feature-count and market share continued to grow rapidly after version 1.0

1430-573: A major $ 4.2 billion deal. The deal closed on March 17, 1999. Another large acquisition in December 1999 was that of MapQuest , for $ 1.1 billion. In January 2000, as new broadband technologies were being rolled out around the New York City metropolitan area and elsewhere across the US, AOL and Time Warner Entertainment announced plans to merge, forming AOL Time Warner, Inc. The terms of

1540-441: A mobile photo-sharing app, for an undisclosed amount. On April 9, 2012, AOL announced a deal to sell 800 patents to Microsoft for $ 1.056 billion. The deal included a perpetual license for AOL to use the patents. In April, AOL took several steps to expand its ability to generate revenue through online video advertising . The company announced that it would offer gross rating point (GRP) guarantee for online video, mirroring

1650-544: A number of country-specific Netscape portals, including Netscape Canada among others. The portal of Netscape Germany was shut down in June 2008. The Netscape Blog was written by Netscape employees discussing the latest on Netscape products and services. Netscape NewsQuake (formerly Netscape Reports ) is Netscape's news and opinion blog, including video clips and discussions. As of January 2012, no new posts have been made on either of these blogs since August 2008. Netscape created

1760-676: A part of the Windows 95 Plus Pack add-on. According to former Spyglass developer Eric Sink, Internet Explorer was based not on NCSA Mosaic as commonly believed, but on a version of Mosaic developed at Spyglass (which itself was based upon NCSA Mosaic). This period of time would become known as the browser wars . Netscape Navigator was not free to the general public until January 1998, while Internet Explorer and Internet Information Server have always been free or came bundled with an operating system and/or other applications. Meanwhile, Netscape faced increasing criticism for " featuritis " – putting

1870-544: A product that was similar to Nintendo. Clark recruited other early team members from SGI and NCSA Mosaic . Jim Barksdale came on board as CEO in January 1995. Jim Clark and Marc Andreessen originally created a 20-page concept pitch for an online gaming network to Nintendo for the Nintendo 64 console, but a deal was never reached. Marc Andreessen explains, "If they had shipped a year earlier, we probably would have done that instead of Netscape." The company's first product

1980-502: A series of acquisitions. It announced the acquisition of Patch Media , a network of community-specific news and information sites focused on towns and communities. On September 28, 2010, at the San Francisco TechCrunch Disrupt Conference, AOL signed an agreement to acquire TechCrunch . On December 12, 2010, AOL acquired about.me , a personal profile and identity platform, four days after

2090-569: A service for IBM -compatible PCs developed in a joint venture with the Tandy Corporation . After the company parted ways with Apple in October 1989, Quantum changed the service's name to America Online. Case promoted and sold AOL as the online service for people unfamiliar with computers, in contrast to CompuServe , which was well established in the technical community. From the beginning, AOL included online games in its mix of products; many classic and casual games were included in

2200-518: A short-lived venture called Control Video Corporation ( CVC ), 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 Bros. 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

2310-532: A surprise when the company laid off the Netscape team and outsourced development to Mercurial Communications. Netscape Browser 8.1.3 was released on April 2, 2007, and included general bug fixes identified in versions 8.0–8.1.2 Netscape Navigator 9 's features were said to include newsfeed support and become more integrated with the Propeller Internet portal, alongside more enhanced methods of discussion, submission and voting on web pages. It also sees

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2420-498: A traditional news portal, and rebranded the social news portal as "Propeller", moving the site to the domain "propeller.com." AOL shut down the Propeller website on October 1, 2010. Netscape operated a search engine, Netscape Search, which now redirects to AOL Search (which itself now merely serves Bing (formerly Google ) search results). Another version of Netscape Search was incorporated into Propeller. Netscape also operated

2530-617: A version of Netscape FastTrack Server was made available for Windows 95/98. Today, most of Netscape's server offerings live on as the Sun Java System , formerly under the Sun ONE branding. Although Netscape Browser 8 was Windows only, multi-platform support exists in the Netscape Navigator 9 series of browsers. Netscape ISP was a dial-up Internet service once offered at US$ 9.95 per month. The company served web pages in

2640-580: A web browser. Other controversial decisions include the browser only being released for Microsoft Windows and featuring both the Gecko rendering engine of previous releases and the Trident engine used in Internet Explorer, and switching between them based on a "compatibility list" that came with the browser. This effectively exposed users to the security vulnerabilities in both and resulted in

2750-501: Is commonly referred to as the " Eternal September ", as Usenet's cycle of new users was previously dominated by smaller numbers of college and university freshmen gaining access in September and taking a few weeks to acclimate. This also coincided with a new "carpet bombing" marketing campaign by CMO Jan Brandt to distribute as many free trial AOL trial disks as possible through nonconventional distribution partners. At one point, 50% of

2860-536: Is in the socio-emotional effects of digital technologies on how people work and interact." Her past research topics specifically include work-role enactment over geographic distance, and interaction rituals on distributed management teams . Rosanne Siino was born on March 29, 1962. The daughter of an Italian immigrant and first generation Italian-American , she was raised in the East Bay (San Francisco Bay Area) , California , United States . After graduating from

2970-415: Is significantly belated. Internet security site Security Watch stated that a trend of infrequent security updates for AOL's Netscape caused the browser to become a "security liability", specifically the 2005–2007 versions, Netscape Browser 8 . Asa Dotzler, one of Firefox's original bug testers, greeted the news with "good riddance" in his blog post, but praised the various members of the Netscape team over

3080-507: Is the retired former Vice President of Communications for Netscape (Communications Corporation). Siino is responsible for crafting the 1990s message that "the web is for everyone", as well as making the pivotal decision to turn Marc Andreessen in to a "rock star," and creating the publicity strategy which landed Andreessen, barefoot, on the cover of Time Magazine . She spent 16 years in corporate communications , 13 of which were in high-tech public relations. Siino retired from Netscape after

3190-543: Is used to power the Mozilla Foundation's Firefox browser. In addition to browsers, Netscape developed a suite of award-winning server software, known as SuiteSpot, to power enterprise Internet and Intranet websites, forums, and email; e-commerce software; and a consumer web portal named Netcenter. Netscape's browser development continued until December 2007, when AOL announced that the company would stop supporting it by early 2008. As of 2024, AOL continues to use

3300-454: The HuffPost acquisition. On September 14, 2011, AOL formed a strategic ad-selling partnership with two of its largest competitors, Yahoo and Microsoft . The three companies would begin selling inventory on each other's sites. The strategy was designed to help the companies compete with Google and advertising networks. On February 28, 2012, AOL partnered with PBS to launch MAKERS,

3410-542: The CDs produced worldwide had an AOL logo. AOL quickly surpassed GEnie , and by the mid-1990s, it passed Prodigy (which for several years allowed AOL advertising) and CompuServe . In November 1994, AOL purchased Booklink for its web browser, to give its users web access. In 1996, AOL replaced Booklink with a browser based on Internet Explorer, reportedly in exchange for inclusion of AOL in Windows. AOL launched services with

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3520-506: The JavaScript web page scripting language. It also pioneered the development of push technology , which effectively allowed websites to send regular updates of information (weather, stock updates, package tracking, etc.) directly to a user's desktop (aka "webtop"); Netscape's implementation of this was named Netcaster. However, businesses quickly recognized the use of push technology to deliver ads to users, which annoyed them, so Netcaster

3630-497: The Mozilla Organization was formed and largely funded by Netscape (the vast majority of programmers working on the code were paid by Netscape) to coordinate the development of Netscape 5 (codenamed "Gromit"), which would be based on the Communicator source code. However, the aging Communicator code proved difficult to work with and the decision was taken to scrap Netscape 5 and re-write the source code. The re-written source code

3740-785: The National Education Association , the American Federation of Teachers , National Geographic , the Smithsonian Institution , the Library of Congress , Pearson , Scholastic , ASCD , NSBA , NCTE, Discovery Networks , Turner Education Services ( CNN Newsroom ), NPR , The Princeton Review , Stanley Kaplan , Barron's , Highlights for Kids , the US Department of Education , and many other education providers. AOL offered

3850-619: The Propeller web portal , which was a popular social-news site, similar to Digg , which was given a new look in June 2006. AOL marketed a discount ISP service under the Netscape brand name. A new version of the Netscape browser, Netscape Navigator 9 , based on Firefox 2, was released in October 2007. It featured a green and grey interface. In November 2007, IE had 77.4% of the browser market, Firefox 16.0%, and Netscape 0.6%, according to Net Applications, an Internet metrics firm. On December 28, 2007, AOL announced that it would drop support for

3960-643: The Tysons Corner CDP in unincorporated Fairfax County , Virginia, near the Town of Vienna . AOL was quickly running out of room in October 1996 for its network at the Fairfax County campus. In mid-1996, AOL moved to 22000 AOL Way in Dulles , unincorporated Loudoun County , Virginia to provide room for future growth. In a five-year landmark agreement with the most popular operating system, AOL

4070-456: The dot-com bubble . It is alleged that several Microsoft executives visited the Netscape campus in June 1995 to propose dividing the market (an allegation denied by Microsoft and, if true, would have breached antitrust laws), which would have allowed Microsoft to produce web browser software for Windows while leaving all other operating systems to Netscape. Netscape refused the proposition. Microsoft released version 1.0 of Internet Explorer as

4180-615: The open source Mozilla project. Netscape publicly released the source code of Netscape Communicator 5.0 under the Netscape Public License , which was similar to the GNU General Public License but allowed Netscape to continue to publish proprietary work containing the publicly released code. The United States Department of Justice filed an antitrust case against Microsoft in May 1998. Netscape

4290-421: The "AOL" from its name. It was the largest merger in history when completed with the combined value of the companies at $ 360 billion. This value fell sharply, to as low as $ 120 billion, as markets repriced AOL's valuation as a pure internet firm more modestly when combined with the traditional media and cable business. This status did not last long, and the company's value rose again within three months. By

4400-511: The 1998 acquisition by AOL and returned to graduate school. Since retiring, she has consulted for numerous high-tech and Internet companies, such as AOL , Google , Shutterfly , Qualcomm , and PlanetOut . Siino is also known for her philanthropy and interest in developing nations . As of 2009, Siino teaches and conducts research for the Management Science and Engineering Department at Stanford University . Her research focus

4510-418: The 60-day advance notice requirement by provisions of the 1988 federal WARN Act . By November 2007, AOL's customer base had been reduced to 10.1 million subscribers, slightly more than the number of subscribers of Comcast and AT&T Yahoo! . According to Falco, as of December 2007, the conversion rate of accounts from paid access to free access was more than 80%. On January 3, 2008, AOL announced

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4620-735: The AOL original series The Future Starts Here in the News and Documentary category. This came days after AOL earned its first Primetime Emmy Award nomination and win for Park Bench with Steve Buscemi in the Outstanding Short Form Variety Series . Created and hosted by Tiffany Shlain , the series focused on humans' relationship with technology and featured episodes such as "The Future of Our Species," "Why We Love Robots" and "A Case for Optimism." On May 12, 2015, Verizon announced plans to buy AOL for $ 50 per share in

4730-689: The America out of America Online," according to industry pundits. Service centers based in India and the Philippines continue to provide customer support and technical assistance to subscribers. On September 17, 2007, AOL announced the relocation of one of its corporate headquarters from Dulles , Virginia to New York City and the combination of its advertising units into a new subsidiary called Platform A. This action followed several advertising acquisitions, most notably Advertising.com , and highlighted

4840-627: The Mac platform until version 4.5. Despite this, Apple entered into an agreement with Microsoft to make IE the default browser on new Mac OS installations, a further blow to Netscape's prestige. The Communicator suite was made up of Netscape Navigator, Netscape Mail & Newsgroups , Netscape Address Book and Netscape Composer (an HTML editor). On January 22, 1998, Netscape Communications Corporation announced that all future versions of its software would be available free of charge and developed by an open source community, Mozilla. Netscape Communicator 5.0

4950-405: The Netscape 7 series of suites being fully supported and updated by Netscape's in-house development team. Between 2005 and 2007, Netscape's releases became known as Netscape Browser . AOL chose to base Netscape Browser on the relatively successful Mozilla Firefox , a re-written version of Mozilla produced by the Mozilla Foundation. This release is not a full Internet suite as before, but is solely

5060-586: The Netscape brand to market a discount Internet service provider, which itself continues to provide a Chromium -based web browser called Netscape, developed by UK security firm SentryBay. Netscape Communications wants you to forget all the highway metaphors you've ever heard about the Internet. Instead, think about an encyclopedia—one with unlimited, graphically rich pages, connections to E-mail and files, and access to Internet newsgroups and online shopping. — Netscape Navigator , Macworld (May 1995) Netscape

5170-536: The Netscape web browser and would no longer develop new releases on February 1, 2008. The date was later extended to March 1 to allow a major security update and to add a tool to assist users in migrating to other browsers. These additional features were included in the final version of Netscape Navigator 9 (version 9.0.0.6), released on February 20, 2008. Netscape Navigator was Netscape's web browser from versions 1.0–4.8. The first beta versions were released in 1994 and were called Mosaic and later Mosaic Netscape. Then,

5280-617: The United States, and the United Kingdom. Additionally, Google Search will be replaced on AOL properties with Bing —which will display advertising sold by Microsoft . Both advertising deals are subject to affiliate marketing revenue sharing . On July 22, 2015, AOL received two News and Documentary Emmy nominations, one for MAKERS in the Outstanding Historical Programming category, and

5390-415: The acquisition. On October 1, 2015, Go90, a free ad-supported mobile video service aimed at young adult and teen viewers that Verizon owns and AOL oversees and operates, launched its content publicly after months of beta testing. The initial launch line-up included content from Comedy Central , HuffPost , Nerdist News , Univision News, Vice , ESPN and MTV . Rosanne Siino Rosanne Siino

5500-475: The alliance was ended, "iPlanet became a division of Sun... Sun retained the intellectual property rights for all products and the engineering" On July 15, 2003, Time Warner (formerly AOL Time Warner) disbanded Netscape. Most of the programmers were laid-off, and the Netscape logo was removed from the building. However, the Netscape 7.2 web browser (developed in-house rather than with Netscape staff, with some work outsourced to Sun's Beijing development center)

5610-420: The browser return to multi-platform support across Windows , Linux and Mac OS X . Like Netscape version 8.x, the new release was based upon the popular Mozilla Firefox (version 2.0), and supposedly had full support of all Firefox add-ons and plugins , some of which Netscape was already providing. A beta of the program was first released on June 5, 2007. The final version was released on October 15, 2007. It

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5720-422: The closing of its Reston, Virginia data center, which was sold to CRG West . On February 6, Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes announced that Time Warner would divide AOL's internet-access and advertising businesses, with the possibility of later selling the internet-access division. On March 13, 2008, AOL purchased the social networking site Bebo for $ 850 million (£417 million). On July 25, AOL announced that it

5830-438: The community. AOL reversed the decision and allowed Netscape to reinstate the popup-blocker for Netscape 7.01. Netscape also introduced a new AOL-free-version (without the usual AOL add-ons) of the browser suite. Netscape 7.1 (codenamed "Buffy" and based on Mozilla 1.4) was released in June 2003. In 2003, AOL closed down its Netscape division and laid-off or reassigned all of Netscape's employees. Mozilla.org continued, however, as

5940-436: The company changed to a flat monthly rate of $ 19.95. During this time, AOL connections were flooded with users trying to connect, and many canceled their accounts due to constant busy signals . A commercial was made featuring Steve Case telling people AOL was working day and night to fix the problem. Within three years, AOL's user base grew to 10 million people. In 1995, AOL was headquartered at 8619 Westwood Center Drive in

6050-473: The company today. It's about setting up for the next five to 10 years." Analyst David Bank said he thought the deal made sense for Verizon. The deal will broaden Verizon's advertising sales platforms and increase its video production ability through websites such as HuffPost , TechCrunch , and Engadget . However, Craig Moffett said it was unlikely the deal would make a big difference to Verizon's bottom line. AOL had about two million dial-up subscribers at

6160-536: The company was formed. The stock was set to be offered at US$ 14 per share, but a last-minute decision doubled the initial offering to US$ 28 per share. The stock's value soared to US$ 75 during the first day of trading, nearly a record for first-day gain. The stock closed at US$ 58.25, which gave Netscape a market value of US$ 2.9 billion. While it was somewhat unusual for a company to go public prior to becoming profitable, Netscape's revenues had, in fact, doubled every quarter in 1995. The success of this IPO subsequently inspired

6270-466: The company's new focus on advertising-driven business models. AOL management stressed that "significant operations" would remain in Dulles, which included the company's access services and modem banks. In October 2007, AOL announced the relocation of its other headquarters from Loudoun County , Virginia to New York City, while continuing to operate its Virginia offices. As part of the move to New York and

6380-456: The company's personalization technology, was Armstrong's fourth-largest deal since taking command in 2009. Later that year, AOL acquired Vidible, a company that developed technology to help websites run video content from other publishers, and help video publishers sell their content to these websites. The deal, which was announced December 1, 2014, was reportedly worth roughly $ 50 million. On July 16, 2014, AOL earned an Emmy nomination for

6490-560: The deal called for AOL shareholders to own 55% of the new, combined company. The deal closed on January 11, 2001. The new company was led by executives from AOL, SBI, 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. In 2002, Jonathan Miller became CEO of AOL. The following year, AOL Time Warner dropped

6600-994: The education campaign that promoted Internet access for the public and made the now-ubiquitous web browser a household word. Siino created the communications team that led Netscape in the 1990s browser wars . Following Netscape, Siino pursued a PhD in Management Science and Engineering in the Organizations , Technology , and Entrepreneurship research area at Stanford University . She obtained her PhD in 2008. Her doctoral research studied managers at work via video conferencing . Her past research topics specifically include work-role enactment over geographic distance, and interaction rituals on distributed management teams. Siino remains deeply committed to philanthropy and serves on multiple corporate and non profit boards. Since 2006, she has been teaching courses in organizational behavior at Stanford University . This article about an American businessperson born in

6710-447: The end of that year, the tide had turned against "pure" internet companies, with many collapsing under falling stock prices, and even the strongest companies in the field losing up to 75% of their market value . The decline continued though 2001, but even with the losses, AOL was among the internet giants that continued to outperform brick and mortar companies. In 2004, along with the launch of AOL 9.0 Optimized, AOL also made available

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6820-536: The end of the fiscal year. On November 23, AOL unveiled a new brand identity with the wordmark "Aol." superimposed onto canvases created by commissioned artists. The new identity, designed by Wolff Olins , was integrated with all of AOL's services on December 10, the date upon which AOL traded independently for the first time since the Time Warner merger on the New York Stock Exchange under

6930-580: The entire browser's source code based on the Gecko rendering engine , and all future Netscape releases were based on this rewritten code. When AOL scaled back its involvement with Mozilla Organization in the early 2000s, the Organization proceeded to establish the Mozilla Foundation in July 2003 to ensure its continued independence with financial and other assistance from AOL. The Gecko engine

7040-502: The existing site in September 2007. Netscape.com now redirects to AOL's website, with no Netscape branding at all. Meanwhile, Netscape.co.uk now redirects to AOL Search, also with no Netscape branding at all. DMOZ (from d irectory. moz illa.org, its original domain name , also known as the Open Directory Project or ODP ), was a multilingual open content directory of World Wide Web links owned by Netscape that

7150-455: The first Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games to depict the adventure with graphics instead of text. During the early 1990s, the average subscription lasted for about 25 months and accounted for $ 350 in total revenue. Advertisements invited modem owners to "Try America Online FREE", promising free software and trial membership. AOL discontinued Q-Link and PC Link in late 1994. In September 1993, AOL added Usenet access to its features. This

7260-505: The first parental controls, and many other online education firsts. AOL purchased search engine WebCrawler in 1995, but sold it to Excite the following year; the deal made Excite the sole search and directory service on AOL. After the deal closed in March 1997, AOL launched its own branded search engine, based on Excite, called NetFind. This was renamed to AOL Search in 1999. AOL charged its users an hourly fee until December 1996, when

7370-643: The first real-time homework help service (the Teacher Pager—1990; prior to this, AOL provided homework help bulletin boards), the first service by children, for children (Kids Only Online, 1991), the first online service for parents (the Parents Information Network, 1991), the first online courses (1988), the first omnibus service for teachers (the Teachers' Information Network, 1990), the first online exhibit ( Library of Congress , 1991),

7480-410: The form of Microsoft Internet Explorer 3.0. But Netscape remained the most popular browser at that time. Netscape also released a Gold version of Navigator 3.0 that incorporated WYSIWYG editing with drag and drop between web editor and email components. Netscape 4 addressed the problem of Netscape Navigator being used as both the name of the suite and the browser contained within it by renaming

7590-600: The hope of diverting more advertising money into the digital space. On April 24, the company launched the AOL On network, a single website for its video output. In February 2013, AOL reported its fourth quarter revenue of $ 599.5 million, its first growth in quarterly revenue in eight years. In August 2013, Armstrong announced that Patch Media would scale back or sell hundreds of its local news sites. Not long afterward, layoffs began, with up to 500 out of 1,100 positions initially impacted. On January 15, 2014, Patch Media

7700-531: The independent Mozilla Foundation , taking on many of Netscape's ex-employees. AOL continued to develop Netscape in-house (with help from Sun's Beijing development center), but, due to there being no staff committed to it, improvements were minimal. One year later, in August 2004, the last version based on Mozilla was released: Netscape 7.2, based on Mozilla 1.7.2. After an official poll posted on Netscape's community support board in late 2006, speculation arose of

7810-596: The largest LLU provider in the UK. In August 2006, AOL announced that it would offer email accounts and software previously available only to its paying customers, provided that users accessed AOL or AOL.com through an access method not owned by AOL (otherwise known as "third party transit", "bring your own access" or "BYOA"). The move was designed to reduce costs associated with the "walled garden" business model by reducing usage of AOL-owned access points and shifting members with high-speed internet access from client-based usage to

7920-399: The more lucrative advertising provider AOL.com. The change from paid to free access was also designed to slow the rate at which members canceled their accounts and defected to Microsoft Hotmail , Yahoo! or other free email providers. The other free services included: Also in August, AOL informed its US customers of an increase in the price of its dial-up access to $ 25.90. The increase

8030-407: The new CEO. Under his leadership, the company invested in media brands and advertising technologies. On June 23, 2015, AOL was acquired by Verizon Communications for $ 4.4 billion. On May 3, 2021, Verizon announced it would sell Yahoo and AOL to private equity firm Apollo Global Management for $ 5 billion. On September 1, 2021, AOL became part of the new Yahoo! Inc . AOL began in 1983, as

8140-668: The option of personalized greetings which would enable the user to hear his or her name while accessing basic functions and mail alerts, or while logging in or out. In 2005, AOL broadcast the Live 8 concert live over the Internet, and thousands of users downloaded clips of the concert over the following months. In late 2005, AOL released AOL Safety & Security Center, a bundle of McAfee Antivirus , CA anti-spyware, and proprietary firewall and phishing protection software. News reports in late 2005 identified companies such as Yahoo! , Microsoft , and Google as candidates for turning AOL into

8250-494: The original PlayNet software system. The company introduced many innovative online interactive titles and games, including: In February 1991, AOL for DOS was launched using a GeoWorks interface; it was followed a year later by AOL for Windows . This coincided with growth in pay-based online services, like Prodigy , CompuServe , and GEnie . 1991 also saw the introduction of an original Dungeons & Dragons title called Neverwinter Nights from Stormfront Studios , one of

8360-420: The other for True Trans With Laura Jane Grace , which documented the story of Laura Jane Grace, a transgender musician best known as the founder, lead singer, songwriter and guitarist of the punk rock band Against Me! , and her decision to come out publicly and overall transition experience. On September 3, 2015, AOL agreed to buy Millennial Media for $ 238 million. On October 23, 2015, AOL completed

8470-593: The platform's public launch. On January 31, 2011, AOL announced the acquisition of European video distribution network goviral. In March 2011, AOL acquired HuffPost for $ 315 million. Shortly after the acquisition was announced, Huffington Post co-founder Arianna Huffington replaced AOL content chief David Eun, assuming the role of president and editor-in-chief of the AOL Huffington Post Media Group. On March 10, AOL announced that it would cut approximately 900 workers following

8580-484: The product with ONE by AOL: Creative, which is geared towards creative and media agencies to similarly connect marketing and ad distribution efforts. On May 8, 2015, AOL reported its first-quarter revenue of $ 625.1 million, $ 483.5 million of which came from advertising and related operations, marking a 7% increase from Q1 2014. Over that year, the AOL Platforms division saw a 21% increase in revenue, but

8690-492: The restructuring of responsibilities at the Dulles headquarters complex after the Reston move, Falco announced on October 15, 2007, plans to lay off 2,000 employees worldwide by the end of 2007, beginning "immediately." The result was a layoff of approximately 40% of AOL's employees. Most compensation packages associated with the October 2007 layoffs included a minimum of 120 days of severance pay, 60 of which were offered in lieu of

8800-556: The start of the major online portal wars. Netscape's exclusive features, such as the Netscape Blog, Netscape NewsQuake, Netscape Navigator, My Netscape and Netscape Community pages, are less accessible from the AOL Netscape designed portal and in some countries not accessible at all without providing a full URL or completing an Internet search . The new AOL Netscape site was originally previewed in August 2007 before moving

8910-413: The suite to Netscape Communicator. After five preview releases in 1996–1997, Netscape released the final version of Netscape Communicator in June 1997. This version, more or less based on Netscape Navigator 3 Code, updated and added new features. The new suite was successful, despite increasing competition from Internet Explorer (IE) 4.0 and problems with the outdated browser core. IE was slow and unstable on

9020-409: The symbol AOL. On April 6, 2010, AOL announced plans to shutter or sell Bebo. On June 16, the property was sold to Criterion Capital Partners for an undisclosed amount, believed to be approximately $ 10 million. In December, AIM eliminated access to AOL chat rooms, noting a marked decline in usage in recent months. Under Armstrong's leadership, AOL followed a new business direction marked by

9130-506: The television-ratings system and guaranteeing audience delivery for online-video advertising campaigns bought across its properties. This announcement came just days before the Digital Content NewFront (DCNF) a two-week event held by AOL, Google , Hulu , Microsoft , Vevo and Yahoo to showcase the participating sites' digital video offerings. The DCNF was conducted in advance of the traditional television upfronts in

9240-472: The time of the buyout. The announcement caused AOL's stock price to rise 17%, while Verizon's stock price dropped slightly. Shortly before the Verizon purchase, on April 14, 2015, AOL launched ONE by AOL, a digital marketing programmatic platform that unifies buying channels and audience management platforms to track and optimize campaigns over multiple screens. Later that year, on September 15, AOL expanded

9350-474: The use of the term "Netscape moment" to describe a high-visibility IPO that signals the dawn of a new industry. During this period, Netscape also pursued a publicity strategy (crafted by Rosanne Siino , then head of public relations) packaging Andreessen as the company's "rock star." The events of this period ultimately landed Andreessen, barefoot, on the cover of Time magazine. The IPO also helped kickstart widespread investment in internet companies that created

9460-485: The world's number one web browser . A cartoon Godzilla -like lizard mascot was drawn by artist-employee Dave Titus, which went well with the theme of crushing the competition. The Mozilla mascot featured prominently on Netscape's website in the company's early years. However, the need to project a more "professional" image (especially towards corporate clients) led to this being removed. On August 9, 1995, Netscape made an extremely successful IPO , only sixteen months after

9570-407: The years for enabling the creation of Mozilla in 1998. Others protested and petitioned AOL to continue providing vital security fixes to unknowing or loyal users of its software, as well as protection of a well-known brand. On June 11, 2007, Netscape announced Netscape Mercury, a standalone email and news client that was to accompany Navigator 9. Mercury was based on Mozilla Thunderbird . The product

9680-480: Was also a trademark of Cisco Systems ) on November 14, 1994, to avoid trademark ownership problems with NCSA , where the initial Netscape employees had previously created the NCSA Mosaic web browser. The Mosaic Netscape web browser did not use any NCSA Mosaic code. The internal codename for the company's browser was Mozilla , which stood for "Mosaic killer", as the company's goal was to displace NCSA Mosaic as

9790-417: Was announced (codenamed "Gromit"). However, its release was greatly delayed, and meanwhile, there were newer versions of Internet Explorer, starting with version 4 . These had more features than the old Netscape version, including better support of HTML 4, CSS , DOM , and ECMAScript ; eventually, the more advanced Internet Explorer 5.0 became the market leader. In October 1998, Netscape Communicator 4.5

9900-680: Was bundled with Windows software. On March 31, 1996, the short-lived eWorld was purchased by AOL. In 1997, about half of all US homes with Internet access had it through AOL. During this time, AOL's content channels, under Jason Seiken , including News, Sports, and Entertainment, experienced their greatest growth as AOL become the dominant online service internationally with more than 34 million subscribers. In February 1998, AOL acquired Compuserve Interactive Services (CIS) via WorldCom (later Verizon ), which kept Compuware's networking business. In November 1998, AOL announced it would acquire Netscape , best known for their web browser , in

10010-530: Was constructed and maintained by a community of volunteer editors. It closed in 2017. AOL AOL (stylized as Aol. , formerly a company known as AOL Inc. and originally known as America Online ) is an American web portal and online service provider based in New York City, and a brand marketed by Yahoo! Inc. The service traces its history to an online service known as PlayNET . PlayNET licensed its software to Quantum Link (Q-Link), which went online in November 1985. A new IBM PC client

10120-571: Was founded in 1983 by Howard Goldberg and Dave Panzl. The service was different from other online services as it used the computing power of the Commodore 64 and the Apple II rather than just a "dumb" terminal. It passed tokens back and forth and provided a fixed-price service tailored for home users. In May 1988, Quantum and Apple launched AppleLink Personal Edition for Apple II and Macintosh computers. In August 1988, Quantum launched PC Link,

10230-552: Was in the form of the Mozilla web browser, on which, with a few additions, Netscape 6 was based. Netscape 7.0 (based on Mozilla 1.0.1) was released in August 2002 as a direct continuation of Netscape 6 with very similar components. It picked up a few users, but was still very much a minority browser. It did, however, come with the popular Radio@Netscape Internet radio client. AOL had decided to deactivate Mozilla's popup-blocker functionality in Netscape 7.0, which created an outrage in

10340-537: Was later renamed Netscape Messenger 9, and an alpha version was released. In December 2007, AOL announced it was canceling Netscape's development of Messenger 9 as well as Navigator 9. Netscape's initial product line consisted of: Netscape's later products included: Between June 2006 and September 2007, AOL operated Netscape's website as social news website similar to Digg . The format did not do well as traffic dropped 55.1 percent between November 2006 and August 2007. In September 2007, AOL reverted Netscape's website to

10450-594: Was launched in 1988, and eventually renamed as America Online in 1989. AOL grew to become the largest online service, displacing established players like CompuServe and The Source . By 1995, AOL had about three million active users. AOL was at one point the most recognized brand on the Web in the United States. AOL once provided a dial-up Internet service to millions of Americans and pioneered instant messaging and chat rooms with AOL Instant Messenger (AIM). In 1998, AOL purchased Netscape for US$ 4.2 billion. By 2000, AOL

10560-561: Was near bankruptcy. Kimsey was brought in by his West Point friend Frank Caufield , an investor in the company. In early 1985, von Meister left the company. On May 24, 1985, Quantum Computer Services , an online services company, was founded by Kimsey from the remnants of Control Video, with Kimsey as chief executive officer and Marc Seriff as chief technology officer . The technical team consisted of Seriff, Tom Ralston, Ray Heinrich, Steve Trus, Ken Huntsman, Janet Hunter, Dave Brown, Craig Dykstra, Doug Coward, and Mike Ficco. In 1987, Case

10670-435: Was not a plaintiff in the case, though its executives were subpoenaed and it contributed much material to the case, including the entire contents of the 'Bad Attitude' internal discussion forum. On November 24, 1998, America Online (AOL) announced it would acquire Netscape Communications in a tax-free stock-swap valued at US$ 4.2 billion. By the time the deal closed on March 17, 1999, it was valued at US$ 10 billion. This merger

10780-409: Was part of an effort to migrate the service's remaining dial-up users to broadband, as the increased price was the same as that of its monthly DSL access. However, AOL subsequently began offering unlimited dial-up access for $ 9.95 a month. On November 16, 2006, Randy Falco succeeded Jonathan Miller as CEO. In December 2006, AOL closed its last remaining call center in the United States, "taking

10890-423: Was promoted again to executive vice-president. Kimsey soon began to groom Case to take over the role of CEO, which he did when Kimsey retired in 1991. Kimsey changed the company's strategy, and in 1985, launched a dedicated online service for Commodore 64 and 128 computers, originally called Quantum Link ("Q-Link" for short). The Quantum Link software was based on software licensed from PlayNet, Inc ., which

11000-435: Was providing internet service to over 20 million consumers, dominating the market of Internet service providers (ISPs). In 2001, at the height of its popularity, it purchased the media conglomerate Time Warner in the largest merger in US history. AOL shrank rapidly thereafter, partly due to the decline of dial-up and rise of broadband . AOL was eventually spun off from Time Warner in 2009, with Tim Armstrong appointed

11110-458: Was released by AOL on August 18, 2004. After the Sun acquisition by Oracle in January 2010, Oracle continued to sell iPlanet branded applications, which originated from Netscape. The Netscape brand name continued to be used extensively. The company once again had its own programming staff devoted to the development and support for the series of web browsers . Additionally, Netscape also maintained

11220-493: Was released. It featured various functionality improvements, especially in the Mail and Newsgroups component, but did not update the browser core, whose functionality was essentially identical to that of version 4.08. One month later, Netscape Communications Corporation was bought by AOL . In November, work on Netscape 5.0 was canceled in favor of developing a completely new program from scratch . In 1998, an informal group called

11330-428: Was released. Version 2.0 added a full email reader called Netscape Mail, thus transforming Netscape from a single-purpose web browser to an Internet suite . The email client's main distinguishing feature was its ability to display HTML email . During this period, the entire suite was called Netscape Navigator. Version 3.0 of Netscape (the first beta was codenamed "Atlas") was the first to face any serious competition in

11440-687: Was ridiculed by many who believed that the two corporate cultures could not possibly mesh; one of its most prominent critics was longtime Netscape developer Jamie Zawinski . During Netscape's acquisition by AOL, joint development and marketing of Netscape software products would occur through the Sun-Netscape Alliance. In the newly branded iPlanet, the software included "messaging and calendar, collaboration, web, application, directory, and certificate servers", as well as "production-ready applications for e-commerce, including commerce exchange, procurement, selling, and billing." In March 2002, when

11550-430: Was short-lived. Netscape was notable for its cross-platform efforts. Its client software continued to be made available for Windows ( 3.1 , 95 , 98 , NT ), Macintosh, Linux, OS/2 , BeOS , and many versions of Unix including DEC , Sun Solaris , BSDI , IRIX , IBM AIX , and HP-UX . Its server software generally was only available for Unix and Windows NT, though some of its servers were made available on Linux, and

11660-577: Was shuttering Xdrive, AOL Pictures and BlueString to save on costs and focus on its core advertising business. AOL Pictures was closed on December 31. On October 31, AOL Hometown (a web-hosting service for the websites of AOL customers) and the AOL Journal blog hosting service were eliminated. On March 12, 2009, Tim Armstrong , formerly with Google , was named chairman and CEO of AOL. On May 28, Time Warner announced that it would position AOL as an independent company after Google 's shares ceased at

11770-424: Was spun off, and majority ownership was held by Hale Global. By the end of 2014, AOL controlled 0.74% of the global advertising market, well behind industry leader Google's 31.4%. On January 23, 2014, AOL acquired Gravity, a software startup that tracked users' online behavior and tailored ads and content based on their interests, for $ 83 million. The deal, which included approximately 40 Gravity employees and

11880-401: Was the first company to attempt to capitalize on the emerging World Wide Web . It was founded under the name Mosaic Communications Corporation on April 4, 1994, the brainchild of Jim Clark who had recruited Marc Andreessen as co-founder and Kleiner Perkins as investors. The first meeting between Clark and Andreessen was never truly about a software or service like Netscape, but more about

11990-477: Was the first time the browser was produced in-house with its own programming staff since 2004. AOL officially announced that support for Netscape Navigator would end on March 1, 2008, and recommended that its users download either the Flock or Firefox browsers, both of which were based on the same technology. The decision met mixed reactions from communities, with many arguing that the termination of product support

12100-446: Was the web browser, called Mosaic Netscape 0.9, released on October 13, 1994. Within four months of its release, it had already taken three-quarters of the browser market. It became the main browser for Internet users in such a short time due to its superiority over other competition, like Mosaic. This browser was subsequently renamed Netscape Navigator , and the company took the "Netscape" name (coined by employee Greg Sands, although it

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