AOL to discontinue dial-up internet service

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
So did you see the AOL as ending their dial
up service. It's still ending it, it still exists. Yeah
wait wait wait wait wait service is going to end
September thirty.

Speaker 2 (00:07):
Eh, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. You're telling me in
twenty twenty five.

Speaker 1 (00:12):
Are you talking about this noise? Yeah? Yeah, that's still.

Speaker 2 (00:30):
A thing in twenty twenty five.

Speaker 3 (00:32):
Yeah, for some people, they announced they're going to discontinue
their dial up Internet. I mean, I can't even I
don't even have a landline phone anymore.

Speaker 2 (00:41):
Yeah, I mean I don't even cav Do you even
know what AOL is? Do you even? I mean your Yeah, we.

Speaker 1 (00:47):
Had dial up until I was like ten, Oh you did.

Speaker 2 (00:49):
Yeah, so even twenty years ago you had dial up Internet.

Speaker 1 (00:53):
Were you allowed to be on the Internet?

Speaker 3 (00:54):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (00:54):
I used.

Speaker 2 (00:55):
I tried to use YouTube, but when my grandma would call,
it always kicked me off the Internet. Okay, So I'm
sure obviously most people hearing our voice would know what
AOL was. But it was this the kind of first
mainstream version of the Internet, in which you had to
have a phone line and you would plug your computer

(01:17):
into this phone line and this program would then it
sounded like you were dialing a phone number and it
would connect you to the internet. Casey, don't ask me
how I know this. You know how long it took
to download a photo.

Speaker 3 (01:28):
A while, yeah, originally called America Online.

Speaker 2 (01:33):
If you had a two hour window between when school
was over when your parents got home from work, you
can get through about three photos.

Speaker 3 (01:38):
I remember when it first came out and my boss
at a radio station had it, but only in his office,
so everybody would go back there and what is this
internet thing?

Speaker 2 (01:49):
And then there was some upgrade of AOL that was
a big deal, went from certain K to another K
and that was a.

Speaker 3 (01:55):
Huge and the free trial scene so that they would
send out that's right, because.

Speaker 2 (02:00):
It was a subscription based thing. It was through your
phone company. I think, right, was that if I remember
that correctly, because the big thing in your house was
you had to then get a second phone line, otherwise
you couldn't be on the phone or.

Speaker 1 (02:12):
You'd be kicked off. When Kevin's grandma calls, that's right,
that's right.

Speaker 2 (02:15):
And the computer at the at the same time, and
I think Kevin is correct. The phone olthough I don't know.
I thought if you called and you were on the Internet.
It gave a busy signal. I thought that was the deal.
You would get a busy signal because you were literally on.

Speaker 1 (02:29):
The phone the phone. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (02:31):
So in twenty one, Verizon sold AOL and Yahoo to
Apollo Global Management for five billion dollars.

Speaker 1 (02:38):
What year twenty one twenty one?

Speaker 2 (02:41):
Yahoo's still around?

Speaker 3 (02:43):
Yes, Yahoo is still around, No kidding, al AOL is
now part of Yahoo.

Speaker 2 (02:48):
But what does AOL do?

Speaker 3 (02:49):
No?

Speaker 2 (02:50):
How many what do people.

Speaker 1 (02:51):
Still have the AOL email? Well?

Speaker 2 (02:54):
Okay, but how are they making money on that?

Speaker 1 (02:56):
I don't believe they are.

Speaker 2 (02:57):
Well, but they paid five billion for it, and there
was some way to I mean, this is dumber to
people that bought my space there. I mean, there must
be some way if you paid five billion for something.
Because the mega merger.

Speaker 1 (03:09):
Is AOL a news site.

Speaker 2 (03:10):
Now, one of the mega mergers of my youth was
the AOL Time Warner merger. That was the beginning of
the end of basically both of those companies. Is when
AOL Time Warner, the cable company, and AOL merged together.
And that I mean people correctly, I'm wrong, You're a
little more season than I People lost massive amounts of

(03:32):
money Ted Turner like lost a fortune in the AOL
Time Warner merger because Time Warner he had, you know,
basic control over Time Warner. And then during that merger
he was put in a corner and told goodbye Grandpa
and then lost ended up losing a fortune on that boy.
I can't believe it's still around.

Speaker 3 (03:54):
Well, there is an AOL dot com and they say
they're news, politics, sports mail in the latest headlines, So
that's how they're making their money.

Speaker 1 (04:01):
You can still get on AOL mail.

Speaker 2 (04:03):
Who's going there for their news? Though? Who's like, you
know what, there's some breaking must have information. I'll go
to AOL.

Speaker 1 (04:11):
AOL.

Speaker 2 (04:11):
Who's working for AOL? Do they have employees? Do they
have people that they sign checks over to do work
on their behalf? I didn't even know it was still around.

Speaker 3 (04:22):
According to the picture, there's a guy working right there.

Speaker 1 (04:26):
According to the picture on the internet.

Speaker 3 (04:29):
Yeah,