America Online

US market-leading commercial information service. America Online was launched in 1986 with a bright, colourful graphical interface and a marketing campaign that issued free disks on almost every US magazine cover. In 1995 it out-performed the then market leader, CompuServe, and took it over in 1997. In January 2001 AOL acquired Time Warner for $100 billion in stock, with the resulting company named AOL Time Warner.

In early 1996, AOL launched AOL Europe, a UK and Continental version of the service, working with the German publishing conglomerate Bertelsmann. It quickly became the UK's largest online service, until the arrival of Freeserve. AOL Europe responded by launching a free Internet service, Netscape Online, in 1999.

The merger with Time Warner was the largest merger in history, bringing together the largest Internet provider and the leading media company. As Bertelsmann was a competitor of Time Warner, AOL bought out Bertelsmann's share of AOL Europe to take direct control of its subsidiary.

America Online grew from 500,000 subscribers in 1993 to 5 million in 1996, 15 million in 1998, 26 million in 2000, and 34 million by April 2002, with 26 million of these in the USA. Increased competition from a growing number of service providers caused the number of subscribers in 2006 to fall to 19 million.