Technology

59377 readers

4179 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.

Our Rules

Follow the lemmy.world rules.
Only tech related content.
Be excellent to each another!
Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
Politics threads may be removed.
No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed

Approved Bots

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

192

AOL Pretends to be the Internet - The History of the Web (thehistoryoftheweb.com)

submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by videodrome@lemmy.capebreton.social to c/technology@lemmy.world

29 comments fedilink hide all child comments

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.capebreton.social/post/497698

In 1994, Ted Leonsis was the head of the new media marketing firm he created, Redgate Communications, spun out six years earlier from a CD-ROM based computer shopping business. Redgate dealed in digital media—sometimes called new media—new territory in the marketing world. And he was pretty good at it. That year, he went out to lunch with one his investment bankers, Dan Case. Case mentioned that his brother Steve was working at a small internet company looking to bring internet services to the mainstream. They had only just finished rebranding to a new name, with a new purpose, America Online.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] wjrii@kbin.social 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Sure it was marketing speak, but Usenet's eternal September started in late 1993, and that's also about when AOL opened up their email to the internet. By late 94 there was a functional browser and they were effectively an ISP with extra stuff (that no one wanted anymore). In some ways, the "AOL is the Internet" angle was an admission that "the Internet" was what people wanted, and AOL itself was redundant. It probably did cause people to spend more on internet service than they needed, but it was already a rear-guard action, whether AOL knew it or not.