I’m one of the oldest AOL e-mail users, having started in 1989 when the service was still called America On Line and used dial-up telephone connections. It has been reported that Disney’s Bob Iger is also an early AOL user and aficionado.
This took place before the 1998 movie You’ve Got Mail made the AOL brand internationally famous.
I remember traveling outside the U.S. always with a list of toll-free telephone numbers in order to connect to the Internet. By the way, AOL’s dial-up Internet service was discontinued in September 2025.
Over the years, AOL has gone through several notable ownerships: Netscape, Time Warner, Verizon, Apollo Global Management, and now Italy’s Bending Spoons.
Based in Milan, the technology company purchased AOL from Apollo for an estimated $1.5 billion, bringing the venerable Internet service outside its U.S. base for the first time. (By Dom Serafini)
Leave A Comment