AOL - AMERICA ONLINE

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AOL (formerly America Online) is an American-based online service provider, Internet service provider, and media company operated by Time Warner. Based in Dulles, a community in Loudoun County, Virginia, with regional branches around the world, it was by far the most successful proprietary online service, with more than 32 million subscribers at one point in the US, Canada, Germany, France, the United Kingdom, Latin America (declared bankrupt in 2004), Japan and formerly Russia. In early 2005, AOL Hong Kong stopped its service. In the fall of 2004, AOL reported total subscribers had dropped to 24 million, a drop of over a quarter of its subscribers.[2] In late 1996, AOL suspended all dialup service within Russia in the face of massive billing fraud, forcing the company into a rare case of full market retreat.

For many Americans through the mid to late 1990s, AOL was the Internet, but the rise of high-speed Internet access from cable and telephone companies as well as the increasing sophistication of the public in handling browsers and other Internet utilities has cut into its user base. In 2000 AOL and Time Warner announced plans to merge, and the deal was approved by the Federal Trade Commission on January 11, 2001. This merger was primarily a product of the Internet mania of the late 1990's, known as the Internet bubble. The subsequent massive decline in value of stocks such as AOL resulted in much recrimination over the merger. Also, the merger with AOL allowed for Time Warner to vote off WCW (World Championship Wrestling).

News reports in the fall of 2005 indicated a renewed interest in buying out AOL. Suitors such as Microsoft, Google, Yahoo and Comcast have had discussions with Time Warner about a possible purchase, and on December 16, 2005, Time Warner and Google announced that they were starting exclusive talks for Google to purchase $1 billion in AOL stock, a 5% share.

Although its dialup market is shrinking as more members switch to high-speed services, the success of its AOL for Broadband program has helped it to maintain members that would otherwise totally drop the AOL service. This combined with its growing advertising revenue through its relationship with Google, AOL collected 8.7 billion US dollars in revenue for 2004. In early March 2006, AOL informed its members that the narrowband monthly rate would be increasing from $23.90 to $25.90.

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