AOL
Careers at AOL
Mission
Aol develops meaningful content experiences both online and offline through the use of technology. By driving the evolution of technology and shaping culture through the use of human ingenuity and code.
Business Segments
- Entertainment: Offers services which deliver custom content to audiences, creates cultural influences in society, celebrity and pop culture, and recommendations for movies and shows to watch.
- Lifestyle: Provides inspiration driven services which empower women to be their best, and insight into real weddings to turn a wedding day vision into reality.
- News and Information: Offers news on a variety of topics with the most popular stories available through their website. Also offers location specific news capabilities to provide relevant information to audiences. TechCrunch is also hosted by Aol for information regarding new startups and internet projects.
- Utility: Provides messaging services, email, identity and data protection, a search engine, virus protection, and MapQuest services.
- Mobile and Devices: Creates new products to connect people with the world around them. Offers an app to manage multiple email accounts, as well as a digital streaming service and video gif creation abilities.
History
Aol was founded in 1985 by Steve Case, and Jim Kimsey. Originally the company was named Quantum Computer Services and served Commodore 64 computer owners. It was in 1991 that the company renamed to America Online, hence the abbreviation Aol. Shortly after the company released their own email addresses for people to use, as well as services to access the internet through Windows platforms. Before the advent of Aol the internet was mainly used by scholars at Universities and other educational institutions.
With an aim to grow exponentially, Aol made quite a few acquisitions in its early days such as; NaviSoft, CompuServe, Netscape, and MapQuest among many others. These acquisitions added functions to the company such as additional web servers, marketing and enterprise solutions, and mapping services. Aol put these additional functions to good use and became the largest internet provider in the nation by 2000. By 2002 the amount of Aol members grew to a staggering 34 million.
In 2004 Aol launched Aol 9.0 Optimized, which created personalization options such as greeting a user by their name when using their services or accessing mail. To keep up with the ever increasing demand for internet security the company released McAfee Antivirus and anti-spyware services to protect users while they browsed online.
By 2006 the long held name of America Online was abandoned and the company branded themselves using the easily remembered abbreviation, Aol. Also in 2006 the company changed many of their paid services to free offers and provided users with services such as their AIM messenger, Aol News, data backup service Xdrive, among many other services which are reminiscent of the company today. Since the companys’ inception they have seen many additions to their services and acquisitions.
Just recently Aol was acquired by Verizon Communications in 2015. Aol continues to strive to build technology assisted content which drives the evolution of culture and the human ingenuity which makes it possible.
