Articles about AOL

After two decades of online chat, AIM is set to shuffle off this mortal coil. First emerging in 1997, AOL Instant Messenger earned itself a loyal following of people who were just starting to discover the internet and what it could be used for. Now Oath -- AOL's new owner -- has announced that it is to close down the service on December 15, 2017.

The reason given is that "the way in which we communicate with each other has profoundly changed," and after the mid-December cut-off date the service will cease to function, and all data will be erased.

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In case you haven't been following the news about 23-year-old Internet company acquisitions, Verizon announced 11 months ago that it had entered into an agreement to buy Yahoo for $4.83 billion. That deal, with some modifications, was officially approved and finalized yesterday, and it is expected to be completely closed on June 13.

When that happens, the telecommunications giant plans to combine those newly acquired assets with AOL, which it also owns, into a new media conglomerate. And of course, when you hear the word "combine," the next word you'll hear is "layoffs."

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Things are all change at Yahoo. The sale of the company to Verizon appears to be going ahead -- despite a series of setbacks along the way, including a high-profile data breach -- for $4.83 billion, and when the deal does go through, Marissa Mayer will step down from the board.

While many news reports today state that Yahoo is now called (or will be) Altaba, this is not strictly true. Verizon is not buying Yahoo in its entirety; a 15 percent stake in Alibaba and a 35.5 percent stake in Yahoo Japan will live on as an investment company going under the new name of Altaba Inc. Details of the changes are revealed in an SEC filing.

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Child pornography is something that, understandably, raises hackles and many people would argue that anything possible should be done to pursue those believed to be involved. But a court in the District of Kansas has ruled that the discovery of images of child porn is not enough to justify warrantless email searches by agents.

The 10th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that email attachment images obtained by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) should be dismissed as evidence as they were gathered via what was deemed to be a warrantless search.

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When consumers think back to the 90's, there are two companies synonymous with personal computing -- Microsoft and AOL. People bought Windows computers and connected to the web with the AOL ISP. Hell, I begged my dad for my first computer when I learned I could talk to girls in AOL chat rooms. In hindsight, I was probably talking to old men pretending to be girls, but I digress.

Both Microsoft and AOL are still quite successful -- the former much more than the latter -- and today, they announce a decade-long extension and expansion to existing agreements. Microsoft is handing over the keys to a large portion of its advertising business, while AOL search will begin using Bing.

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The headline may seem a bit outrageous but is a fair assessment of what Big Red gets from its proposed purchase of AOL. The all-cash, $4.4 billion deal would strengthen Verizon's media portfolio, and I wonder: Is this what happens when there is Net Neutrality? ISPs become content carriers?

Verizon's venture cannot be understated for what it means. Like a game of Risk, where players jockey for early-play position and forge alliances with eventual combatants, mobile is a battleground in the making. Territory captured now will mean everything in the future. AOL's content portfolio, which includes Huffington Post, is among the major assets.

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The latest big name company to fall victim to a security breach is AOL. In a post on the company blog, the AOL security team reveals that it is currently working with "best-in-class external forensic experts and federal authorities" to investigate unauthorized access to the network. Suspicion was raised by a marked increase in the number of spam emails sent via spoofed AOL Mail addresses, and an investigation was immediately launched.

AOL says that a "significant number of user accounts" are affected and that the breach involves accessing information associated with these accounts. It seems that those responsible for the security breach have been able to gain access to email addresses, postal addresses, and address book contact information, as well as encrypted versions of passwords and answers to security questions.

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My first computer, a Packard Bell, ran Windows 95. My father bought it for me after I begged him relentlessly. It was a huge expense that we really couldn't afford, but he came through. I sold him on it by promising to use it for schoolwork and learning. However, my true motives were far more devious -- I wanted AOL. Yes, believe it or not, the concept of talking to a girl over the Internet in a chat room was an amazing feat in 1996. This was very intriguing to a teenage nerd.

My love affair with AOL continued for a while, until broadband was introduced years later. I then promptly ditched the service for a cable modem. However, to this day, the Microsoft/AOL power-couple of the 90's still conjures nostalgic feelings. Today, AOL announces that it is teaming up with Microsoft for an all-new content deal.

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I'll be brief, because I'm seven days now with the flu and don't feel much like writing. But today's "open letter" for global government surveillance reform demands rebuke.

I'm all for curbing government snooping, but what about corporations collecting information? Tech Giant's -- AOL, Apple, Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, Microsoft, Twitter, and Yahoo -- reform rally is disingenuous and self-serving. These same companies collect mountains of personal information for profit. So, what? It's okay for them to snoop, but not governments?

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When companies announce their intention to shutter services, fans suddenly appear from nowhere, begging for a change of heart. Some months ago there was a petition asking Google to grant Reader a stay of execution. It's not the first and it won't be the last petition Google has ignored -- there's currently one begging for Android 4.4 KitKat to be made available on the Galaxy Nexus, and of course another one asking for the old YouTube comments system to be restored.

Last week AOL, once the darling of the internet back when it was all shiny and new, announced it will be killing off Winamp, the popular media player released back in 1997, and purchased by America Online in 1999 for $80 million.

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For years technology blogs have trumpeted the death of RSS, but it took Google shutting down Reader to reveal just how alive and well the platform truly is.

When my colleague Alan Buckingham expressed his dislike of Feedly, Google Reader’s heir apparent, he was bombarded with emails from other feed reading services requesting he give them a shot. Other firms, like Digg, are rolling out new services, and now AOL has announced its own Reader replacement.

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It's truly the final curtain call for Netscape. A portion the company's technologies are part of a massive $1 billion patent sale between AOL and Microsoft, announced Monday morning. Microsoft was the top bidder in an auction to sell off non-essential technologies that include about 800 patents.

Microsoft is also acquiring a subsidiary of AOL. While AOL did not specify the subsidiary by name, sources tell All Things Digital that it is Netscape. AOL still retains the right to the brand and related businesses, but all the technologies behind it are now owned by the Redmond, Wash. company.

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Ed Oswald argues that TechCrunch embodies some of the worst ethics in journalism today. In counterpoint "AOL will ruin TechCrunch," Joe Wilcox argues that under Huffington Post management the tech site's good original reporting will greatly diminish.

I have been thinking about writing a story on the sorry state of tech journalism for a good part of my seven years in this business. Why's that? All too often objectivity, ethics and accuracy seem to have taken a backseat 'round these parts.

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Joe Wilcox argues that TechCrunch produces boatloads of original content using a method called process journalism. In counterpoint, "TechCrunch just exposed what is wrong with tech journalism today", Ed Oswald contends that the blog is rife with conflict of interest and questionable news reporting ethics.

Have you been on the Internet long enough to remember Global Network Navigator -- yeah, that's GNN. It was the first web portal I used to get news and quick access to other useful sites. O'Reilly & Associates (now O'Reilly Media) launched the site in 1993. AOL bought GNN in 1995 and closed it in 1996, quite unceremoniously. The domain is still active and points to Huffington Post. Old-time Netters will remember GNN and a long list of other properties and products purchased by AOL that were later abandoned or closed -- all part of a decade-and-a-half plan to reinvent as a new media company.

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