Spectre Brands

GhostDial-up online service · Dulles, Virginia

AOL

Incorporated May 24, 1985 as Quantum Computer Services. Dial-up service discontinued Sep 30, 2025.

America Online sold the internet by the month over a phone line. Then the phone line stopped being how people got online.

Why ghost: AOL still operates as a free web portal and e-mail service, owned since January 2, 2026 by Bending Spoons, but the business that made it, a paid dial-up online service with about 26.7 million U.S. subscribers in September 2002, was down to 2.2 million by 2014 and was switched off on September 30, 2025.6141819

A pile of AOL promotional CDs
Free-trial discsPhoto: Jeran Renz, via Wikimedia Commons, CC0.
AOL home page in December 1996 announcing unlimited use pricing
aol.com, Dec 1996
AOL home page in September 2006 offering free AOL Mail
aol.com, Sep 2006

At its peak AOL had about 26.7 million paying U.S. subscribers and enough stock-market value to take over Time Warner. Within a year of that peak its parent had booked a $98.7 billion annual loss, and within twelve years nine in ten subscribers were gone. The name survives as a portal and a mailbox under its fifth owner. This post-mortem is built from two decades of SEC filings, company announcements, contemporary press and the archived website.61419

The company in four numbers

26.7M
U.S. AOL subscribers on September 30, 2002, the highest figure the company reported6
$98.7B
AOL Time Warner’s net loss for 2002, after $99.8 billion of goodwill and intangible write-downs6
2.2M
U.S. subscribers at the end of 2014, the last year AOL reported as a public company14
$1.46B
cash paid by Bending Spoons for AOL on January 2, 202619

Key findings

  1. The product was the connection. In 2005 subscriptions were $6.75 billion of AOL’s $8.20 billion in revenue. When households moved to broadband sold by cable and phone companies, the reason to pay AOL went with the phone line.1229
  2. Growth was bought through the mailbox. AOL spent $212.7 million on marketing in fiscal 1996 and carried $363.0 million of deferred subscriber acquisition costs on its balance sheet. It wrote off $385.2 million of them in a single quarter.12
  3. The merger was paid for at the top. The deal was valued at more than $160 billion on the day it was announced. Two years later the combined company wrote down $99.8 billion, of which $33.5 billion in the fourth quarter alone was AOL goodwill.226
  4. It saw the decline and said so. The 2002 annual report warned of “further declines due to the maturing narrowband services subscriber universe, subscribers adopting broadband service.” In August 2006 AOL stopped charging broadband users at all.610
  5. The name kept its value longer than the business. Verizon paid about $4.4 billion in 2015, Apollo $5 billion for AOL and Yahoo together in 2021, and Bending Spoons $1.456 billion in 2026.151619

Post-mortem No. 009 · Every figure links to a numbered source · Derived figures, estimates and unverified claims are labeled

The market it lived in

The decade the country changed wires

AOL sold access over the telephone network. In March 2000, two months after the Time Warner deal, 1% of American adults had broadband at home. By the end of 2007 more than half did.

Home broadband in the United States, from Pew Research Center surveys
1%of U.S. adults had home broadband in March 200029
12%in December 2002, the quarter after AOL’s subscriber peak29
54%in December 200729
78%in Pew’s 2025 survey29

Broadband up, AOL down

Share of U.S. adults with home broadband (line, right axis) against AOL’s U.S. subscribers in millions (bars).

Data table
Broadband up, AOL down
PeriodU.S. adults with home broadband (%)AOL U.S. subscribers (millions)
20001%19.4M
20019%25.2M
200212%26.5M
200319%24.3M
200425%22.2M
200536%19.5M
200644%13.2M
200754%9.3M
200855%6.9M
200959%5.0M
Broadband: Pew Research Center fact sheet, using the last survey of each year except 2000 (March 31)29. AOL: June 30 for 2000, December 31 thereafter56789101112.

What a subscription bought

In 1996 the monthly fee bought three things at once: a local phone number for the modem to call, software that worked without configuration, and a private world of chat rooms, mail and channels that sat beside the open web. AOL’s 1996 home page called it “The World’s Most Popular Internet Online Service.”37

Broadband unbundled all three. The connection came from the cable or telephone company. The browser came with the computer. That left the content and the mailbox, and in 2006 AOL concluded it could not charge for those either.10 Time Warner’s annual report that year named the cause in a subordinate clause: “the industry-wide decline of the premium dial-up ISP business and growth in the broadband Internet access business.”10

busy… busy… busy…
Original illustration. One phone line could carry a call or a modem, not both.

The shared line

A dial-up session occupied the household telephone. Flat-rate pricing in December 1996 removed the reason to hang up, and AOL had to more than double its modems, from 143,000 to 350,000, within the fiscal year.2

The story

A free disc, a monthly fee and a phone line

AOL did not lose its customers to a better online service. It lost them to a faster wire that somebody else owned, and it had already spent its share price on Time Warner when that happened.

Chapter 1 of 6

3.0M

subscribers on June 30, 1995, up from 182,000 three years earlier

A pile of AOL promotional CDs in different colours
AOL trial discs distributed in Canada in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Photo: Jeran Renz, Wikimedia Commons, CC0.38

1985 – 1995 · The mailbox

An online service for people who did not like computers

The company was incorporated in Delaware on May 24, 1985 as Quantum Computer Services.132 Its first product, Q-Link, was an online service for owners of Commodore computers. In October 1989 it introduced a nationwide service under the name America Online, and two years later it took that name for the company.32 It sold shares to the public in 1992.32

The growth came through the post. The first large mailing went out in 1993: about 200,000 floppy disks, each costing $1.19 to make, with a free trial on them. Jan Brandt, the marketing chief who ran the programme, later put the response to that mailing at 10%.25 Subscribers went from 303,000 in June 1993 to 903,000 a year later and 3.0 million a year after that.1 A member paid $9.95 a month for five hours and $2.95 for each additional hour.1

Chapter 2 of 6

$19.95

a month for unlimited use, from December 1, 1996

Commercial · 1997Steve Case: “working day and night to fix the problem” AOL’s chief executive addresses the busy signals that followed flat-rate pricing. The uploader says it was recorded on February 14, 1997, two weeks after AOL’s agreement with 36 state attorneys general.23 Watch on YouTube

Dec 1996 – 1997 · Flat rate

Unlimited use, and a busy signal

On December 1, 1996 AOL replaced the hourly meter with “a standard monthly membership fee of $19.95, with no additional hourly charges.”2 Members stayed connected, and the network could not carry them. On January 29, 1997 Washington and 35 other states signed an agreement under which AOL would refund members who could not get on in December and January and would stop advertising for February. “AOL’s marketing clearly got out ahead of its technological capacity,” said Washington’s attorney general.23

The filings show the cost. AOL booked a $24.2 million settlement charge, and it expanded its network from 143,000 modems to 350,000 during the fiscal year.2 It also stopped treating marketing as an asset: $385.2 million of deferred subscriber acquisition costs was written off as of September 30, 1996, and the year ended with a net loss of $499.3 million on revenue of $1.69 billion.2 Membership still rose, from 6.2 million to 8.6 million.2

Chapter 3 of 6

$6.9B

revenue in the year to June 30, 2000, with net income of $1.2 billion

AOL.COM home page in October 2000 with a mail sign-in box, search and shopping panels
aol.com on October 19, 2000, three months before the Time Warner merger closed.37

1998 – 2000 · The peak of the idea

The world’s most popular internet online service

AOL bought the things around it. It took over CompuServe’s online service in January 1998, paid $287 million in cash for the instant-messaging company behind ICQ that June, and merged with Netscape in March 1999 in exchange for about 95 million shares.34 It raised the monthly price to $21.95 in April 1998 and kept growing.3

By June 30, 2000 the AOL service had 23.2 million members worldwide, 19.4 million of them in the United States. AOL Instant Messenger, which was free, had more than 61 million registered users. Revenue for the year was $6.89 billion and net income $1.23 billion.5

Chapter 4 of 6

$98.7B

AOL Time Warner’s net loss for 2002

News segment · 2000CNN on the AOL and Time Warner merger A CNN segment from January 2000, uploaded in 2009 by the journalist Scott Rosenberg, who appears in it. The deal was announced on January 10, 2000.22 Watch on YouTube

Jan 2000 – 2003 · The merger

Fifty-five percent of the largest media company in the world

On January 10, 2000 AOL agreed to merge with Time Warner. It was an all-stock deal worth more than $160 billion at that day’s prices, and AOL’s shareholders were to own about 55% of the combined company.225 The merger closed on January 11, 2001 and was accounted for as AOL acquiring Time Warner at a cost of about $147 billion.6

The subscriber count peaked at 26.7 million in the United States on September 30, 2002 and slipped to 26.5 million by year-end.6 The accounts for that year carried a $54.2 billion charge on adopting new goodwill rules and a further $45.5 billion impairment in the fourth quarter, of which $33.5 billion was AOL goodwill. The net loss was $98.7 billion.6 The Securities and Exchange Commission and the Department of Justice were investigating how AOL had booked advertising revenue.6 On October 16, 2003 the company dropped “AOL” from its name.7

Chapter 5 of 6

−92%

fall in U.S. subscribers from September 2002 to December 2014 (derived)

PHONE CABLE the line it lived on someone else’s
The phone cord, unplugged. Original illustration.

2003 – 2015 · The unwinding

Free to anyone who already had a connection

Subscribers left at two to three million a year, then faster. On August 2, 2006 AOL announced it would give its software and e-mail away to anyone with a broadband connection and live on advertising. It ended that year with 13.2 million U.S. subscribers, down from 19.5 million.910 Time Warner sold a 5% stake to Google for $1 billion in 2006 and bought it back in July 2009 for $283 million.12

On December 9, 2009 Time Warner distributed AOL to its own shareholders.12 The independent AOL, under Tim Armstrong, bought The Huffington Post for $295.5 million net of cash in March 2011 and sold about 800 patents to Microsoft in 2012.1314 By the end of 2014 there were 2.2 million subscribers, who had been paying for an average of 14 years.14 On May 12, 2015 Verizon agreed to buy the company for $50 a share, about $4.4 billion.15

Chapter 6 of 6

$1.46B

cash paid by Bending Spoons for AOL on January 2, 2026

AOL home page in September 2025 with a yellow header, a search box and news stories
aol.com as archived on September 29, 2025, the day before dial-up ended. Some images did not load in the capture.37

2015 – 2026 · The name

Three more owners, and the modem goes quiet

Verizon combined AOL with Yahoo in June 2017 in a subsidiary called Oath, and shut AOL Instant Messenger on December 15 of that year.2827 In May 2021 it agreed to sell the whole media unit to Apollo for $5 billion, keeping a 10% stake. The deal closed on September 1, 2021.1617

In 2025 AOL posted a notice on its help site: “AOL routinely evaluates its products and services and has decided to discontinue Dial-up Internet.” The date given was September 30, 2025.18 A month later Apollo’s Yahoo agreed to sell AOL to Bending Spoons, an Italian company that buys established consumer software. The purchase closed on January 2, 2026 for $1,456 million in cash.2119

Timeline

Forty-one years, 30 moments

From a Commodore bulletin board to an Italian software holding company. Filter by thread.

All 31 events as a list
  1. May 241985
    Corporate

    Incorporated as Quantum Computer Services

    A Delaware company whose first service, Q-Link, is for owners of Commodore computers.132

  2. 1989
    Product & pricing

    “America Online” and “You’ve Got Mail”

    Quantum introduces a nationwide service under the America Online name in October. Elwood Edwards records the greetings on a cassette deck at home.3226

  3. 1991
    Corporate

    The company takes the name of its service

    Quantum Computer Services becomes America Online, Inc.32

  4. 1992
    Money

    Initial public offering

    AOL sells stock to the public for the first time. It ends the fiscal year with 182,000 subscribers.321

  5. 1993
    Product & pricing

    The first mass mailing of trial disks

    About 200,000 floppy disks go out. The response rate, by the account of the executive who ran it, is 10%.25

  6. Jun 301995
    Money

    3.0 million subscribers

    More than three times the 903,000 of a year earlier.1

  7. Jun 301996
    Money

    6.2 million subscribers and $1.09 billion in revenue

    Marketing costs for the year are $212.7 million.1

  8. Sep 301996
    Money

    $385.2 million of marketing costs written off

    AOL stops capitalising subscriber acquisition costs and expenses the whole balance.2

  9. Dec 11996
    Product & pricing

    Flat-rate pricing: $19.95 a month, unlimited

    Usage jumps and members begin to get busy signals.237

  10. Jan 291997
    Decline & owners

    Agreement with 36 state attorneys general

    AOL agrees to refunds, easier cancellation and a pause in advertising for February.23

  11. Jan 1998
    Deals

    CompuServe

    AOL acquires CompuServe’s online service, which has about 2.1 million subscribers that June.3

  12. Apr 1998
    Product & pricing

    Price rises to $21.95

    The increase takes effect at each member’s April billing date.3

  13. Jun 1998
    Deals

    ICQ

    AOL pays $287 million in cash, with up to $120 million more contingent, for Mirabilis, maker of ICQ.3

  14. Mar 1999
    Deals

    Netscape

    AOL completes its merger with Netscape, issuing about 95 million shares.4

  15. Jan 102000
    Deals

    AOL agrees to merge with Time Warner

    An all-stock deal worth more than $160 billion at that day’s prices. AOL shareholders are to own about 55%.225

  16. Jan 112001
    Corporate

    AOL Time Warner begins

    The merger closes. The cost of acquiring Time Warner is recorded at about $147 billion.6

  17. Sep 302002
    Money

    The peak: 26.7 million U.S. subscribers

    The year-end count is 26.5 million.6

  18. FY 2002
    Decline & owners

    A $98.7 billion net loss

    Goodwill and intangible write-downs total $99.8 billion. The SEC and the Department of Justice are investigating AOL’s accounting.6

  19. Oct 162003
    Corporate

    “AOL” is dropped from the parent’s name

    AOL Time Warner Inc. becomes Time Warner Inc.7

  20. Dec 202005
    Deals

    Google agrees to buy 5% of AOL for $1 billion

    The stake is issued in April 2006. Time Warner buys it back in July 2009 for $283 million.912

  21. Aug 22006
    Product & pricing

    AOL goes free for broadband users

    Software and e-mail are given away to anyone with a connection. U.S. subscribers end the year at 13.2 million, from 19.5 million.10

  22. 2008
    Deals

    Bebo

    AOL pays $852 million in cash for the social network. Time Warner records a $2.2 billion impairment of AOL goodwill for the year.1211

  23. Dec 92009
    Corporate

    Spun off from Time Warner

    Shareholders receive one AOL share for every eleven Time Warner shares. AOL has 5.0 million subscribers and about 6,700 employees.12

  24. Mar 42011
    Deals

    The Huffington Post

    Acquired for $295.5 million, net of cash acquired.13

  25. Dec 312014
    Money

    2.2 million subscribers

    Subscription revenue is $606.5 million of a $2.53 billion total.14

  26. May 122015
    Decline & owners

    Verizon agrees to buy AOL

    $50 a share, about $4.4 billion.15

  27. Jun 132017
    Corporate

    Oath

    Verizon closes its purchase of Yahoo and combines it with AOL.28

  28. Dec 152017
    Decline & owners

    AOL Instant Messenger shuts down

    Announced on October 6, 2017.27

  29. Sep 12021
    Decline & owners

    Apollo completes its purchase

    $5 billion for Verizon’s media business, which takes the name Yahoo. Verizon keeps 10%.1617

  30. Sep 302025
    Decline & owners

    Dial-up is discontinued

    The AOL Dialer software and the AOL Shield browser go with it.18

  31. Jan 22026
    Decline & owners

    Bending Spoons completes its purchase

    $1,456 million in cash for AOL Holdco I LLC. The deal was announced on October 29, 2025.1921

Part 2 of 6

Business

The numbers · Marketing · Rivals

The numbers

Twenty-three years of subscribers, and where the money went

AOL reported a subscriber count in every annual filing from its first to its last. Read in a row, they draw one hill. The revenue line follows it with a lag, and the write-downs arrive in a single year.

AOL subscribers, 1992–2014

Millions of subscribers to the AOL service. See the note for the changes of basis.

0.0M10.0M20.0M30.0M1992199519982001200420072010201412345670.0M10.0M20.0M30.0M199219972002200720141234567
  1. 1995 · The disks work 3.0 million subscribers in June 1995, from 903,000 a year earlier.1
  2. 1997 · Flat rate $19.95 unlimited from December 1996. 8.6 million members by June 1997 despite the busy signals.2
  3. 2000 · The merger is announced 19.4 million U.S. subscribers in June 2000, five months after the Time Warner deal.5
  4. 2002 · The peak 26.7 million on September 30, 2002 and 26.5 million at year-end.6
  5. 2006 · Free for broadband After the August 2006 change of strategy the count falls by 6.3 million in a year, to 13.2 million.10
  6. 2009 · Spun off 5.0 million when AOL leaves Time Warner in December 2009.12
  7. 2014 · Last report 2.2 million at the end of 2014, before the sale to Verizon.14

The basis changes three times. 1992–1997 are worldwide subscribers at June 30 (the service was almost entirely American until 1996). 1998 is North America at June 30. 1999 and 2000 are U.S. subscribers at June 30. 2001 onward are U.S. subscribers at December 31. The 26.7 million peak fell between year-ends and is not a point on the line.

Data table
AOL subscribers, 1992–2014
Fiscal years to June 30 through 2000; December 31 from 2001AOL subscribers (millions)
19920.2M
19930.3M
19940.9M
19953.0M
19966.2M
19978.6M
199811.2M
199915.3M
200019.4M
200125.2M
200226.5M
200324.3M
200422.2M
200519.5M
200613.2M
20079.3M
20086.9M
20095.0M
20103.9M
20113.3M
20122.8M
20132.5M
20142.2M
America Online 10-Ks for fiscal 1996, 1997, 1998 and 20001235; AOL Time Warner and Time Warner 10-Ks for 2002 to 200867891011; AOL Inc. 10-Ks for 2009, 2011 and 2014121314.

The peak and the floor

26.7M
U.S. subscribers on September 30, 20026
6.3M
subscribers lost in 2006 alone, the year AOL went free for broadband users (derived: 19.5M less 13.2M)910
$18.38
average monthly revenue per U.S. subscriber in 200811
14 years
average paid tenure of the 2.2 million who were still subscribing at the end of 201414
Company filings as cited.

AOL revenue, 1994–2014

$ millions. Three reporting bases, shown in three colours.

Data table
AOL revenue, 1994–2014
PeriodAmerica Online, Inc. (fiscal years to June 30)AOL segment of AOL Time Warner / Time WarnerAOL as restated in AOL Inc. filings
1994$115.7Mn/an/a
1995$394.3Mn/an/a
1996$1093.9Mn/an/a
1997$1685.2Mn/an/a
1998$3114Mn/an/a
1999$4804Mn/an/a
2000$6886Mn/an/a
2001n/a$8615Mn/a
2002n/a$9094Mn/a
2003n/a$8598Mn/a
2004n/a$8692Mn/a
2005n/an/a$8202.1M
2006n/an/a$7786.7M
2007n/an/a$5180.7M
2008n/an/a$4165.8M
2009n/an/a$3257.4M
2010n/an/a$2416.7M
2011n/an/a$2202.1M
2012n/an/a$2191.7M
2013n/an/a$2319.9M
2014n/an/a$2527.2M
Fiscal 1994–1997 as first reported12. Fiscal 1998–2000 as restated in the fiscal 2000 10-K for later poolings, including Netscape5. 2001–2002 AOL segment6; 2003–2004 AOL segment9. 2005–2009 from AOL Inc.’s first 10-K12; 2010–2014 from its last14. The three bases are not strictly comparable: Time Warner’s own 2005 figure for the AOL segment was $8,283M against $8,202.1M in AOL Inc.’s later accounts.

What the revenue was made of, 2005–2014

$ millions. Subscriptions were 82% of revenue in 2005 and 24% in 2014 (derived).

Data table
What the revenue was made of, 2005–2014
PeriodSubscriptionAdvertising and other
2005$6754.9M$1447.2M
2006$5783.6M$2003.1M
2007$2787.9M$2392.8M
2008$1929.3M$2236.5M
2009$1388.8M$1868.6M
2010$1023.6M$1393.1M
2011$803.2M$1398.9M
2012$705.3M$1486.4M
2013$650.1M$1669.8M
2014$606.5M$1920.7M
AOL Inc. 10-Ks for 2009 and 20141214. For 2005–2009 “Advertising and other” is the derived sum of the advertising and other lines (for 2005: $1,337.8M + $109.4M). Shares are derived: $6,754.9M ÷ $8,202.1M = 82%; $606.5M ÷ $2,527.2M = 24%.

The 2002 write-downs

$99.8 billion of goodwill and other intangible assets written off by AOL Time Warner in one year, $ billions.

$99.8B Goodwill and intangibles written off, 2002
$54.2B 54%January 1 charge on adopting FAS 142, all segments$33.5B 34%Q4 impairment: AOL goodwill$10.6B 11%Q4 impairment: Cable goodwill$1.5B 2%Q4 impairment: Music goodwill and brands$54.2B 54%January 1 charge on adopting FAS142, all segments$33.5B 34%Q4 impairment: AOL goodwill$10.6B 11%Q4 impairment: Cable goodwill$1.5B 2%Q4 impairment: Music goodwill andbrands
  • January 1 charge on adopting FAS 142, all segments. Recorded as the cumulative effect of an accounting change
  • Q4 impairment: AOL goodwill. “lower than expected performance” of the AOL segment
Data table
The 2002 write-downs
Where it wentAmountShareNote
January 1 charge on adopting FAS 142, all segments$54.2B54%Recorded as the cumulative effect of an accounting change
Q4 impairment: AOL goodwill$33.5B34%“lower than expected performance” of the AOL segment
Q4 impairment: Cable goodwill$10.6B11%
Q4 impairment: Music goodwill and brands$1.5B2%
AOL Time Warner 10-K for 20026. $54,235M + $45,538M = $99,773M; the fourth-quarter $45,538M is $33,489M + $10,550M + $1,499M.

One year’s loss against the later sale price

$98.7BAOL Time Warner’s net loss for 2002
=
22 ×what Verizon agreed to pay for all of AOL in 2015 ($4.4B)

Derived $98.696 billion ÷ $4.4 billion = 22.4, shown as 22 coins.615 The 2002 loss belonged to the whole of AOL Time Warner, not to AOL alone; $33.5 billion of the fourth-quarter write-down was AOL goodwill.

Data table
One year’s loss against the later sale price
Value
AOL Time Warner’s net loss for 2002$98.7B
what Verizon agreed to pay for all of AOL in 2015$4.4B
Ratio22 (derived)
AOL Time Warner 10-K for 20026; Verizon press release, May 12, 201515.

What AOL bought on the way down, and what was paid for AOL

$ millions, as reported. The Apollo price covered AOL and Yahoo together.

Apollo buys Verizon Media (AOL and Yahoo), 2021
$5.0B
$4.25B cash, $750M preferred; Verizon kept 10%16
Verizon buys AOL, 2015
$4.4B
$50 a share15
Bending Spoons buys AOL, 2026
$1.456B
Cash19
Google buys 5% of AOL, 2006
$1.0B
Bought back for $283M in 200912
AOL buys Bebo, 2008
$852M
Cash paid in 200812
AOL buys The Huffington Post, 2011
$295.5M
Net of cash acquired13
AOL buys ICQ’s maker, 1998
$287M
Cash, plus up to $120M contingent3
Data table
What AOL bought on the way down, and what was paid for AOL
DealPriceNote
Apollo buys Verizon Media (AOL and Yahoo), 2021$5.0B$4.25B cash, $750M preferred; Verizon kept 10%
Verizon buys AOL, 2015$4.4B$50 a share
Bending Spoons buys AOL, 2026$1.456BCash
Google buys 5% of AOL, 2006$1.0BBought back for $283M in 2009
AOL buys Bebo, 2008$852MCash paid in 2008
AOL buys The Huffington Post, 2011$295.5MNet of cash acquired
AOL buys ICQ’s maker, 1998$287MCash, plus up to $120M contingent
Company filings and press releases as cited.

Marketing

A trial disc in every mailbox

AOL’s marketing was direct response at a scale nobody had tried for software: a disk, a free trial and a phone number, measured promotion by promotion.

The disc programme, in its managers’ own words and the company’s accounts
$1.19cost of each floppy disk in the first large mailing of about 200,000 in 1993, according to Jan Brandt25
10%response to that mailing, by Brandt’s account25
$35Steve Case’s estimate of what AOL spent to win one subscriber, a tenth of roughly $350 in lifetime revenue24
$300M+Brandt’s estimate of total spending on the discs. AOL never published a figure24
Quora answers by Steve Case and Jan Brandt, as reported by TechCrunch on December 27 and 28, 20102425. These are recollections, not audited figures.

Marketing costs against revenue, fiscal 1994–1997

$ millions, years to June 30. Marketing was about a fifth of revenue in each year (derived).

Data table
Marketing costs against revenue, fiscal 1994–1997
PeriodTotal revenuesMarketing costs
FY1994$115.7M$23.5M
FY1995$394.3M$77.1M
FY1996$1093.9M$212.7M
FY1997$1685.2M$409.3M
America Online 10-Ks for fiscal 1996 and 199712. Derived ratios: 20% (1994), 20% (1995), 19% (1996), 24% (1997). Until September 30, 1996 most subscriber acquisition spending was capitalised and amortised, so these expense lines understate the cash going out; the balance sheet carried $363.0M of deferred costs at June 30, 1996.

At one point, 50% of the CD’s produced worldwide had an AOL logo on it.

Jan Brandt, AOL’s former chief marketing officer, on Quora, as quoted by TechCrunch, Dec 201024

Brandt’s 50% figure is her recollection and has not been independently verified. We report it as a claim.

The voice

The four phrases every member heard, “Welcome,” “You’ve Got Mail,” “Files done” and “Goodbye,” were recorded in 1989 by Elwood Edwards, whose wife worked at Quantum Computer Services and volunteered him. He recorded them on a cassette deck in his living room.26 The second phrase became the title of a 1998 film from Warner Bros., which two years later was a sister company.

Commercial · 1999“So easy to use, no wonder it’s number one” The slogan of the peak years. The 1999 date comes from the uploader. AOL had 17.6 million subscribers worldwide that June.4 Watch on YouTube
FREE! HOURS AND HOURS then a monthly fee on your card another one
Original illustration in the spirit of the trial discs. Not a reproduction of any AOL packaging.

The offer

Hours free, then a monthly fee on a credit card. At the end of 2002, 10% of the 26.5 million U.S. members were on free trials or retention offers.6

The rivals

The services it beat, and the wire that beat it

AOL won the contest among online services and dial-up providers so thoroughly that it bought one of them. The competitor that mattered sold a different product.

Who sold Americans their connection

Subscribers, and what became of each company.

AOL

Ghost
1995: 3.0M2014: 2.2M
26.7M → 2.2M Peak in September 2002; 2.2 million by 2014. Dial-up ended in 2025.61418

CompuServe

Acquired
2.1M The older rival. AOL took over its online service in January 1998, when it had about 2.1 million subscribers.3

EarthLink

Merged
2005: 5.3M2016: 0.7M
5.3M 5.3 million paying subscribers in 2005 and 2006, of whom 3.3 million were on dial-up. About 0.7 million consumer subscribers by 2016, when it agreed an all-stock merger with Windstream valued at about $1.1 billion.3334

Comcast (cable broadband)

Survived
2008: 14.9M2025: 31.3M
31.3M 14.9 million high-speed internet customers at the end of 2008; 31.3 million domestic broadband customers at the end of 2025.3536
Data table
Who sold Americans their connection
CompanyOutcomeSubscribersNotesSeries
AOLGhost26.7M → 2.2MPeak in September 2002; 2.2 million by 2014. Dial-up ended in 2025.3, 8.6, 19.4, 26.5, 19.5, 6.9, 2.2
CompuServeAcquired2.1MThe older rival. AOL took over its online service in January 1998, when it had about 2.1 million subscribers.
EarthLinkMerged5.3M5.3 million paying subscribers in 2005 and 2006, of whom 3.3 million were on dial-up. About 0.7 million consumer subscribers by 2016, when it agreed an all-stock merger with Windstream valued at about $1.1 billion.5.3, 5.3, 0.9, 0.8, 0.7
Comcast (cable broadband)Survived31.3M14.9 million high-speed internet customers at the end of 2008; 31.3 million domestic broadband customers at the end of 2025.14.9, 31.3
Company 10-K filings as cited. EarthLink’s sparkline mixes total paying subscribers (2005–2006) with average consumer access subscribers (2014–2016), so it shows direction, not a like-for-like series.
Ghost

AOL, end of 2008

Product
Dial-up access and a portal
U.S. subscribers
6.9M11
Change in the year
−2.4M (derived)11
Price
$25.90 or $11.99 a month11
Owns the wire
No
Alive

Comcast, end of 2008

Product
Cable broadband
High-speed internet customers
14.9M35
Change in the year
+1.3M, excluding acquisitions35
Homes passed
50.6M35
Owns the wire
Yes
Time Warner and Comcast 10-Ks for 20081135. AOL’s change is derived: 9.3M less 6.9M.

The irony inside the merger

From January 2001 AOL shared a parent with one of the largest cable systems in the United States. The combination was supposed to put AOL on that wire. The 2002 annual report shows what happened instead: the Cable segment’s revenue grew from $6.0 billion to $7.0 billion while AOL warned that its own members were “adopting broadband service.”6 In early 2006 AOL was still signing agreements with outside high-speed providers to carry its service.9 Microsoft’s MSN and Prodigy were also competitors in dial-up; we have not included them above because we did not verify subscriber figures for them.

Part 3 of 6

Brand

Commercials & footage · Old website · Brand gallery

Commercials & footage

How AOL sold the internet, and how the news covered the end

Three television spots from the dial-up years, the day the Time Warner deal was announced, the man who recorded “You’ve Got Mail,” and two looks back.

Commercial · 1995“A Friend Said Try AOL” A one-minute spot from the years of metered pricing, when a member paid $9.95 a month for five hours.1 The 1995 date comes from the uploader, who says it was recorded off Comedy Central. Watch on YouTube
Commercial · 1997Steve Case: “working day and night to fix the problem” AOL’s chief executive addresses the busy signals that followed flat-rate pricing. The uploader says it was recorded on February 14, 1997, two weeks after AOL’s agreement with 36 state attorneys general.23 Watch on YouTube
Commercial · 1999“So easy to use, no wonder it’s number one” The slogan of the peak years. The 1999 date comes from the uploader. AOL had 17.6 million subscribers worldwide that June.4 Watch on YouTube
News segment · 2000CNN on the AOL and Time Warner merger A CNN segment from January 2000, uploaded in 2009 by the journalist Scott Rosenberg, who appears in it. The deal was announced on January 10, 2000.22 Watch on YouTube
Interview · 2012“You’ve Got Mail” with Elwood Edwards AOL’s own short film about the man who recorded its four greetings on a cassette deck in 1989. Published by AOL in September 2012. Edwards died in November 2024.26 Watch on YouTube
Retrospective · 2019CNBC: “The Rise and Fall of AOL” A thirteen-minute retrospective published by CNBC in August 2019. Its figures are CNBC’s; ours are in the sections above. Watch on YouTube
News segment · 2025BBC News: AOL ends dial-up service Published on September 30, 2025, the day the service was discontinued.18 Watch on YouTube

Videos are embedded from the services that host them and load only when you press play. YouTube embeds use youtube-nocookie.com. Each video belongs to its uploader or rights holder and is shown here for commentary; we do not host any of the files.

The old website

What aol.com said, 1996 to 2025

The members’ service ran inside AOL’s own software and was never archived. These are screenshots of the public website as saved by the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine, cropped to the page. Click one to open the original capture.37

Screenshot of http://www.aol.com/ as archived Dec 20, 1996

Captured Dec 20, 1996

Three weeks into flat-rate pricing

The page announces unlimited use pricing and promotes the Buddy List, “now available on AOL 3.0.” The site is a brochure for the service, with a “Try AOL” button.

Open this capture on the Wayback Machine

Text preserved in the archived pages

“The World’s Most Popular Internet Online Service”
aol.com · Dec 20, 1996 capture37
“December 2, 1996 America Online Launches New Unlimited Use Pricing”
AOL Announces · Dec 20, 1996 capture37
“AOL Anytime, Anywhere. Check Your AOL Mail.”
aol.com · Oct 19, 2000 capture37
“Get Free AOL Mail”
aol.com · Sep 13, 2006 capture37
“AOL routinely evaluates its products and services and has decided to discontinue Dial-up Internet.”
help.aol.com · Aug 9, 2025 capture18

Captures were located with the Wayback Machine in October 2026. The 1996 capture shows a seasonal header in Italian (“Benvenuto a”), apparently one of several rotating greetings. Some images in the 2025 capture were not archived.

Part 4 of 6

People

People · Press

The people

Who ran it

Roles are from the filings and announcements cited. We have left out people and details we could not source.

People (7)
Name and roleWhat they didAfterwards
Steve CaseChairman and CEO of America Online; chairman of AOL Time Warner

Led AOL through its growth and agreed the Time Warner merger, becoming chairman of the combined company.22 He later recalled the plan in the early years as spending 10% of a subscriber’s lifetime revenue to acquire them.24

Richard Parsons had succeeded him as chairman by May 2003; Case was still a director in March 2004.7
Jan BrandtChief marketing officer

Ran the disk and disc mailings. By her account the first large mailing, in 1993, drew a 10% response.2425

Bob PittmanPresident and COO of America Online

Named co-chief operating officer of AOL Time Warner, with Richard Parsons, when the merger was announced.22

Gerald LevinCEO of Time Warner, then of AOL Time Warner

Agreed the merger for Time Warner and became chief executive of the combined company.22

Richard ParsonsCEO of AOL Time Warner from May 2002; chairman from May 2003

Was in charge when the company took “AOL” out of its name on October 16, 2003.7

Tim ArmstrongChairman and CEO of AOL Inc.

Led the independent company and its turn to advertising and media, and stayed to run AOL under Verizon.15

Became chief executive of Oath when Verizon combined AOL with Yahoo in 2017.28
Elwood EdwardsThe voice

Recorded “Welcome,” “You’ve Got Mail,” “Files done” and “Goodbye” on a cassette deck in his living room in 1989.26

Died in November 2024, aged 74.26

The clippings

What they said at the time

Press (8)
AOL’s marketing clearly got out ahead of its technological capacity.
Christine Gregoire, Washington attorney general, Jan 29, 199723
America Online recently has experienced declines in the number of U.S. subscribers, to approximately 26.5 million at December 31, 2002, and anticipates that it will experience further declines.
AOL Time Warner, annual report for 20026

  1. An analyst at Raymond James, quoted by CNET News.com on the day of the merger, Jan 10, 200022

    With 55 percent of the new company’s stock being controlled by AOL shareholders, I think AOL is in the driver’s seat.

  2. Steve Case, on Quora, as quoted by TechCrunch, Dec 201024

    When we went public in 1992 we had less than 200,000 subscribers; a decade later the number was in the 25 million range.

  3. Lowell McAdam, Verizon chairman and CEO, on buying AOL, May 12, 201515

    Verizon’s vision is to provide customers with a premium digital experience based on a global multiscreen network platform.

  4. Michael Albers, Oath, announcing the end of AIM, as quoted by The Verge, Oct 6, 201727

    AIM tapped into new digital technologies and ignited a cultural shift, but the way in which we communicate with each other has profoundly changed.

  5. Fortune, on the fifteenth anniversary of the deal, Jan 10, 201531

    what is usually described as the worst merger of all time

  6. AOL Help, 202518

    AOL routinely evaluates its products and services and has decided to discontinue Dial-up Internet.

Part 5 of 6

Verdict

Cause of death · What if · Afterlife

Cause of death

The autopsy

Tap a cause to see the evidence. The percentages are our editorial weighting. The evidence under each one is sourced.

Cause of death, by editorial weight

One square is one percentage point. The weights are our judgment, not a measurement.

  1. 40%Broadband replaced the phone line
  2. 20%It did not own a wire
  3. 20%The merger spent the currency and the attention
  4. 12%Revenue was a subscription to something free
  5. 8%Acquisitions that did not replace it
Data table
Cause of death, by editorial weight
CauseWeight
Broadband replaced the phone line40%
It did not own a wire20%
The merger spent the currency and the attention20%
Revenue was a subscription to something free12%
Acquisitions that did not replace it8%

Home broadband went from 1% of U.S. adults in March 2000 to 54% in December 2007. AOL’s U.S. subscribers went from 26.5 million to 9.3 million over the last five of those years. The company named the cause itself: “subscribers adopting broadband service.”29611

AOL rented its network and sold access on top of it. Cable and telephone companies owned the faster connection and sold it directly: Comcast had 14.9 million high-speed customers at the end of 2008, when AOL had 6.9 million dial-up subscribers. As late as 2006 AOL was still negotiating with outside broadband providers to carry its service.35119

AOL used its stock to acquire Time Warner at a recorded cost of about $147 billion. Within two years the combined company wrote off $99.8 billion, faced SEC and Justice Department investigations of AOL’s advertising accounting, later paid a $300 million SEC penalty and reserved $3 billion for shareholder suits.69

Subscriptions were 82% of AOL’s revenue in 2005 (derived). When AOL made its software and e-mail free in August 2006, subscription revenue fell from $5.78 billion to $2.79 billion in a year, and advertising grew by far less.1210

AOL paid $852 million in cash for Bebo in 2008 and sold it in 2010. Time Warner impaired AOL’s goodwill by $2.2 billion in 2008, and AOL impaired it by a further $1.4 billion in 2010.121113

Editorial judgment: the weights are an interpretive model by the Spectre Brands editors, not a measured quantity. The filings document the symptoms. How much each one contributed is a matter of opinion.

The fork in the road

What if…

Three decisions where the story could have gone differently. The “What if” panels are speculation, labeled as such.

What happened

In January 2000 AOL agreed to an all-stock merger with Time Warner, valued at more than $160 billion that day.22 Time Warner did own cable systems, but they were one division among film, television, music and magazines, and AOL’s 2002 annual report still described broadband as a threat to its subscriber base.6

What if speculative

The same paper could have bought access infrastructure alone, or long-term wholesale rights to it. AOL would then have sold the faster connection under its own name while its brand was strongest. Whether regulators and cable owners would have allowed that in 2000 is unknown.

What happened

AOL kept charging for its software, mail and content until August 2, 2006, by which time U.S. subscribers had fallen from 26.5 million to under 19.5 million.6910 Free web mail and portals from Yahoo, Microsoft and Google had grown up in the meantime.

What if speculative

Opening the mailbox and the portal at the 2002 peak would have put about 26 million established accounts onto an advertising model four years sooner, at the cost of several billion dollars a year in subscription revenue that Time Warner was relying on. It is the trade the company eventually made, from a weaker position.

What happened

The merger closed on January 11, 2001.6 For nine years AOL was a division of a media company, renamed, investigated and finally spun off with 5.0 million subscribers on December 9, 2009.712

What if speculative

An independent AOL would still have faced the move to broadband with no wire of its own, and its stock would have fallen with the rest of the sector. It would have kept the freedom to make its own deals with cable and telephone companies, and it would have avoided the write-downs and litigation that came with the merger. It is not obvious the subscriber line would have looked different.

Where are they now

The afterlife

AOL

  1. The portal and the mailbox

    Still operating

    aol.com still publishes news and still delivers mail. Announcing its purchase in October 2025, Bending Spoons’ chief executive said AOL had “around 8 million daily and 30 million monthly active users.”21 In 2026 the new owner said it had moved the portal to a new content system and rebuilt the webmail front end.20

  2. Dial-up

    Switched off

    Discontinued on September 30, 2025, with the AOL Dialer software and the AOL Shield browser.18 The Associated Press, citing Census Bureau data, reported that an estimated 163,401 U.S. households used only dial-up in 2023. How many of them were AOL’s is unknown.30

  3. AOL Instant Messenger

    Shut down

    More than 61 million registered users in June 2000.5 Closed on December 15, 2017.27

  4. The media brands

    Sold on

    Verizon’s 2015 announcement listed The Huffington Post, TechCrunch and Engadget among AOL’s assets.15 They passed to Oath and then to Apollo’s Yahoo with the rest of Verizon’s media business.2816 Patch, the local news network, had already been moved into a joint venture majority-owned by Hale Global in January 2014.14

  5. The parent

    Absorbed

    AOL Time Warner became Time Warner on October 16, 2003.7 It distributed AOL to shareholders in 2009.12 The SEC now lists the old registrant under the name Warner Media, LLC.6

  6. The voice

    Remembered

    Elwood Edwards, who recorded “You’ve Got Mail” in 1989, died in November 2024 at 74.26

Who has owned the AOL name

Five owners in forty-one years. Each paid for something different.

  1. 1985

    Quantum Computer Services

    Incorporated May 24, 1985. Renamed America Online, Inc. in 1991 and listed in 1992.132

  2. Jan 2001

    AOL Time Warner

    AOL’s shareholders take about 55% of the merged company. “AOL” leaves the name in October 2003.567

    about $147 billion recorded as the cost of acquiring Time Warner
  3. Dec 2009

    AOL Inc.

    Spun off to Time Warner’s shareholders as an independent, listed company with 5.0 million subscribers.12

  4. 2015

    Verizon

    Agreed May 12, 2015. Combined with Yahoo as Oath in June 2017.1528

    about $4.4 billion
  5. Sep 2021

    Apollo (Yahoo)

    Buys Verizon’s media business, AOL and Yahoo together. Verizon keeps 10%.1617

    $5 billion for both
  6. Jan 2026

    Bending Spoons

    Acquires AOL Holdco I LLC from Yahoo three months after dial-up ends.1921

    $1,456 million in cash
Data table
Who has owned the AOL name
WhenOwnerWhat happenedPrice
1985Quantum Computer ServicesIncorporated May 24, 1985. Renamed America Online, Inc. in 1991 and listed in 1992.
Jan 2001AOL Time WarnerAOL’s shareholders take about 55% of the merged company. “AOL” leaves the name in October 2003.about $147 billion recorded as the cost of acquiring Time Warner
Dec 2009AOL Inc.Spun off to Time Warner’s shareholders as an independent, listed company with 5.0 million subscribers.
2015VerizonAgreed May 12, 2015. Combined with Yahoo as Oath in June 2017.about $4.4 billion
Sep 2021Apollo (Yahoo)Buys Verizon’s media business, AOL and Yahoo together. Verizon keeps 10%.$5 billion for both
Jan 2026Bending SpoonsAcquires AOL Holdco I LLC from Yahoo three months after dial-up ends.$1,456 million in cash
Company filings and announcements as cited. The 2001 figure is the accounting cost of Time Warner to AOL, not a price paid for AOL.

Sources & data notes

Show your work

Primary sources first. SEC filings link to the original text on EDGAR: America Online, Inc. (CIK 883780), AOL Time Warner / Time Warner (CIK 1105705), AOL Inc. (CIK 1468516) and Bending Spoons (CIK 2004711).

  1. America Online, Inc. — Form 10-K, fiscal year to June 30, 1996, filed Sep 30, 1996.
  2. America Online, Inc. — Form 10-K, fiscal 1997, filed Sep 29, 1997.
  3. America Online, Inc. — Form 10-K, fiscal 1998, filed Sep 28, 1998.
  4. America Online, Inc. — Form 10-K, fiscal 1999, filed Aug 13, 1999.
  5. America Online, Inc. — Form 10-K, fiscal 2000, filed Sep 22, 2000.
  6. AOL Time Warner Inc. — Form 10-K for 2002, filed Mar 28, 2003. The registrant is now listed by the SEC as Warner Media, LLC.
  7. Time Warner Inc. — Form 10-K for 2003, filed Mar 15, 2004.
  8. Time Warner Inc. — Form 10-K for 2004, filed Mar 11, 2005.
  9. Time Warner Inc. — Form 10-K for 2005, filed Feb 27, 2006.
  10. Time Warner Inc. — Form 10-K for 2006, filed Feb 23, 2007.
  11. Time Warner Inc. — Form 10-K for 2008, filed Feb 20, 2009.
  12. AOL Inc. — Form 10-K for 2009, filed Mar 2, 2010.
  13. AOL Inc. — Form 10-K for 2011, filed Feb 24, 2012.
  14. AOL Inc. — Form 10-K for 2014, filed Feb 27, 2015.
  15. Verizon — “Verizon to Acquire AOL,” press release, May 12, 2015, filed as an exhibit to AOL Inc.’s Form 8-K.
  16. Verizon — “Verizon Media to be acquired by Apollo Funds,” press release, May 3, 2021.
  17. Apollo Global Management — “Apollo Funds Complete Acquisition of Yahoo,” press release, Sep 1, 2021.
  18. AOL Help — “Dial-up Internet to be discontinued”, Internet Archive capture of Aug 9, 2025. The live page needs JavaScript.
  19. Bending Spoons S.p.A. — draft registration statement on Form F-1, 2026 (closing date and cash consideration for AOL Holdco I LLC).
  20. Bending Spoons S.p.A. — Q2 2026 results, exhibit to Form 6-K, Aug 2026.
  21. Tech.eu — “Bending Spoons to acquire early internet pioneer AOL”, Oct 29, 2025.
  22. CNET News.com — “AOL to buy Time Warner in historic merger”, Jan 10, 2000.
  23. Washington State Office of the Attorney General — “Washington reaches agreement with America Online,” news release, Jan 29, 1997.
  24. TechCrunch — MG Siegler, “How Much Did It Cost AOL To Send Us Those CDs In The 90s? ‘A Lot!,’ Says Steve Case”, Dec 27, 2010.
  25. TechCrunch — MG Siegler, “More On AOL’s Disc Strategy: $1.19 Floppies, 50% Of All CDs Made, And Precision Bombing”, Dec 28, 2010.
  26. ABC7 News (CNN Wire) — “Elwood Edwards, voice of AOL’s iconic greeting ‘You’ve Got Mail,’ dies at 74”, Nov 7, 2024.
  27. The Verge — Jacob Kastrenakes, report on the shutdown of AOL Instant Messenger, Oct 6, 2017.
  28. TechCrunch — Ingrid Lunden, “Verizon closes $4.5B acquisition of Yahoo, Marissa Mayer resigns”, Jun 13, 2017.
  29. Pew Research Center — Internet, Broadband Fact Sheet, Nov 20, 2025 (home broadband use over time).
  30. FOX 10 Phoenix — “AOL ending its dial-up internet service: Here’s what to know”, Aug 11, 2025 (reports the Associated Press’s Census Bureau figure).
  31. Fortune — Rita Gunther McGrath, “15 years later, lessons from the failed AOL-Time Warner merger”, Jan 10, 2015.
  32. International Directory of Company Histories (Gale), via Encyclopedia.com — “America Online, Inc.”.
  33. EarthLink, Inc. — Form 10-K for 2006, filed Mar 1, 2007.
  34. EarthLink Holdings Corp. — Form 10-K for 2016, filed Feb 24, 2017.
  35. Comcast Corporation — Form 10-K for 2008, filed Feb 20, 2009.
  36. Comcast Corporation — Form 10-K for 2025, filed Feb 3, 2026.
  37. Internet Archive Wayback Machine — captures of aol.com: Dec 20, 1996, Oct 19, 2000, Sep 13, 2006, Sep 29, 2025.
  38. Wikimedia Commons — AOL promotional CDs in Canada (Jeran Renz, CC0); AOL 770 (Gino DePinto, CC BY-SA 4.0); AOL old logo (public domain text logo).
Data notes (8)

Data notes

Editorial: We set “died” to 2025, the year AOL discontinued dial-up access, the product the company was built on. Other defensible dates are 2006, when AOL stopped charging broadband users; 2009, when Time Warner spun it off; and 2015, when it ceased to be an independent company. AOL is classed as a ghost, not dead: the portal and the mail service operate under Bending Spoons.

Subscriber series: The basis changes. 1992–1997: worldwide subscribers at June 30. 1998: North America at June 30 (11.237M of 12.535M worldwide). 1999–2000: U.S. at June 30. 2001 onward: U.S. “AOL brand” subscribers at December 31, which in the Time Warner years included members on free trials and retention offers. The 26.7M peak is the September 30, 2002 figure given in the 2002 10-K. No subscriber figures were published after 2014 that we could verify, so the line stops there.

Derived: −92%: (26.7M − 2.2M) ÷ 26.7M. 6.3M lost in 2006: 19.5M − 13.2M. 2.4M lost in 2008: 9.3M − 6.9M. Subscription share of revenue: $6,754.9M ÷ $8,202.1M = 82% (2005); $606.5M ÷ $2,527.2M = 24% (2014). “Advertising and other” for 2005–2009 is the sum of two reported lines. Marketing as a share of revenue, fiscal 1994–1997: 20%, 20%, 19%, 24%. Total 2002 write-downs: $54.235B + $45.538B = $99.773B, which matches the total stated in the 10-K. Scale block: $98.696B ÷ $4.4B = 22.4.

Estimates: Spending on the trial discs (“over $300 million”), the $1.19 cost per floppy disk, the 10% response rate, the 50% share of world CD production and the $35 cost per subscriber are recollections by Jan Brandt and Steve Case posted on Quora in 2010 and reported by TechCrunch. AOL did not publish these figures. The audited equivalents are the marketing costs and deferred subscriber acquisition costs in the 10-Ks. The value of the merger on the day it was announced (“more than $160 billion”) is CNET’s calculation from that day’s share prices; other outlets published other figures.

Unverified: Brandt’s claim that half of all CDs produced worldwide once carried an AOL logo has not been independently verified. The price Bending Spoons paid was not in its announcement; press reports before closing put it at about $1.4 to $1.5 billion, and we use the $1,456 million cash consideration stated in its draft registration statement. The active-user figures for AOL in 2025 are the buyer’s statement. The number of AOL dial-up customers at shutdown is unknown. Upload-supplied dates on three commercials are labelled as such in their captions.

Revenue bases: Fiscal 1994–1997 revenue is as first reported. Fiscal 1998–2000 is as restated in the fiscal 2000 10-K to include companies merged by pooling of interests; the fiscal 1998 and 1999 10-Ks first reported $2,600M and $4,777M. 2001–2004 is the AOL segment as reported by its parent. 2005–2014 is from AOL Inc.’s own filings.

Method: SEC filings were read in full text from EDGAR, or from Internet Archive copies of the same EDGAR documents, in October 2026. Two sources were read through a text-extraction tool and not as raw pages: the Verizon release of May 3, 202116 and the Tech.eu article21. The fiscal 1999 U.S. subscriber figure (15.3M) is taken from the fiscal 2000 10-K.

General knowledge: The film You’ve Got Mail was released by Warner Bros. in 1998. Q-Link was Quantum’s service for Commodore computers. Dial-up modems of the late 1990s were rated at up to 56 kilobits per second.

More post-mortems

Pets.com

1998 – 2000

Dead
Unit economics
270 days from IPO to wind-down

Webvan

1996 – 2001

Dead
Overexpansion
$827M cumulative net loss, 1998 to Mar 2001

Groupon

2008 – present

Ghost
A fad that faded
−84% revenue, 2014 peak to 2025 (derived)

Browse all 35