1996 AOL Commercial

[ScorpioBornIn69]

I use to have an aol account, it was terminated five years ago because of violating 'their' terms of service six times, three of them 'bulk mail' violations. I also knew several others met online who had their accounts removed because of aol's censorship terms which is a joke. This is also why aol has been losing members and why their stock went way down south.

[eliotareed]

Omg WORLD WIDE email!?! I got to get me some of those.....

[gcastro44]

I remember the pay-by-hour rates. my parents never got into the whole internet thing in the 90s because my friend's mom told them that her bill one time was $600 lol

[lygersarereal]

The number is now a national telemarketing company. haa!

[True2TheBlueYoViGang]

lmfao.. i wonder what happens if you call that number today? someone shud try it lmfaoooo if it still works..

[nelsonstx]

Web 0.5!!!!!

[aei05h1]

Waffles are the superior potato consumable.

[thaKG]

At least they were accurate about Web Crawler...

[whosyanig]

haha over a hundred news papers!!!



[ChrisVaughn85]

No xtube in these days!

[Dailybabble]

AOL is popular fifteen years ago its all about cable now. Next is satellite?

[aurora990]

@Dailybabble there is already satellite broadband. however, fiber optics is better than cable. fiber optic directly to people's houses is becoming popular than cable.

[Dailybabble]

@aurora990 I know I realize that when I notice I have Dish Network LOL

[500voyages]

the Internet?

[therealblkraptor]

lol at "over 100 newspapers and magazines." My God we've come a long way.

[schnids1605]

My folks used to get so pissed at me cause i'd be online a lot and it charged by the minute/hour

[vaibanez17]

I love how millions of people thought they had to have an internet program to get on the internet. There are still people today who pay for AOL when they don't even need it. There was a recent article done about how 60-70% of AOL's profits are from people who don't realize they don't need AOL to get on the internet.

[Hunkola]

@vaibanez17 --- Sadly, you are correct......I lost count of how many friends and family I had to inform that AOL was not the only way to connect to the internet......they got those free CDs from AOL every month and assumed that was the whole internet......morons!

[Slacker4LiFe247]

@vaibanez17 That's funny my friends used to give me hell because I was still paying for AOL years ago. Only reason I kept paying for it was I had the same email address forever and didn't want to change it. Once AOL said if you cancel your account you can keep using us as your Email provider. It was an easy choice to say C-YA! Only thing AOL had cool was the chat rooms but even now thats spam with bots and message forums and blogs are more popular than chat rooms.

[EmperorofCartoons]

@vaibanez17 Well, to be fair around the time of this ad you did kinda need AOL or an equivalent service to get on the internet. Unless you wanted to use the old tel-net IRC type stuff or had access to one of the very, very few (At the time.) ISP's that allowed you web access.

[gedaman]

hahaha. I remember the good old 90s when everyone had to have a 2nd phone line for Internet access. Every trendy person had an AOL account, nerds used Earthlink or Errols. You could wait an hour for some webpages to load. AOLs browser would block certain unapproved websites. The only way you got uncensored Internet through AOL was when you used another web browser like IE or Netscape Navigator.

AOL is one of the few things I don't miss from the 90s.

[Hunkola]

@gedaman --- I remember the days when AOL used to bill hourly for connection......some of my monthly bills were over $500 because I was addicted to the chat rooms

[RandomEpicness100]

@josephamaker94 It's 2011 and I still see many people using Windows XP.

[EmperorofCartoons]

@RandomEpicness100 I'd still be using Windows 95 if it was still supported. It was the last great windows version.

[iTsKoNvIcT]

hahah it led me to the telemarketing company hahahahahah

[madtonesbr]

Dude where can I get WebCrawler i'm using this Chrome shit and it lost all my bookmakrs help someone pls reply now my dads mad at me cuz he cant look up stuf on his gold swing n e more pls help

[groobz101]

loll we get AOL in the UK shouldn't it be called UKOL. Imagine the mail noise "hello old chap the nice man from the Royal Mail has left some mail in your electronic mail box. Would you be a good chap and read it as soon as possible! Thanks for using UKOL!"

[tharock220]

I remember getting those AOL discs with free games. At one point they were offering 50 free hours, but by then everything was $20/month unlimited access.

[beaman220]

Technology is a mother.

[Chris242tt]

oooh.your golf swing!LOL!

[SteelCity1981]

Has anyone tried to call that number recently and see if that number is still working? lol

[TheOpenminded12460]

@TheOpenMinded12460 Too bad Youtube came out in 2005!

[NoamTube]

Man, remember being all excited upgrading my 9.6 baud modem to a lightning fast 28.8. What fun times they were.

[TheOpenminded12460]

@TheOpenMinded12460 America Off-Line!

[redsoxfan1984]

A friend of mine still uses AOL, mostly because her parents are to technologically illiterate or don't care enough to upgrade. She has to go offline everytime someone in her house wants to make a phone call.

I can't even remember having dial-up. Must be hell to have it in 2010.

[UnhappyDreamer]

Damn thing used to cost like $25/mo... :-\ Things changed fast when NetZero came along... :-\

[NoamTube]

@UnhappyDreamer

$25.00 a month? When AOL 2.0 came on the scene I remember getting billed about 5 bucks an hour to use it.

[lander77477]

LOL stock updates every 15 minutes? Is that slow or a standard amount of time? That sounds slow but im not a stock market expert

[NoamTube]

@lander77477

in order to get real time quotes, you have to pay for that service. Most other stock charts have a 15 minute delay. Anywhere you look for the stock price of something, you'll see "15 minute delay" in small letters somewhere next to the box.

[tsntana]

@lander77477 Even on TV (via CNN, CNBC, etc), stock quotes were delayed 15 minutes.

[Roxas671]

i feel like im getting spam just watching this

[3xefx8x]

Did he say he have porn and click access at 0:18 LOL

[tealmarlin]

aol was like the only provider back then other then about 3 other providers, At&T, Prodigy, and that other one where you pay per min, LOL

[Axel10011]

yeah i remember this stuff lol back then when it took 14=20 min to load one video that was fast!! lmfao

[Johnnymushio]

worldwide email as opposed to.. nationwide?

[bastlake]

wow, total throwback, I remember that ad

I also remember constantly getting AOL demo diskettes with my subscription to Wizard Magazine

I also remember, living in Canada, how my dad wouldn't let us get the internet, because he thought America Online WAS the internet. And since it was "America" Online, it would therefor cost long-distance charges.

[boludovos]

windows 3.11

[xanafanadu]

i had aol for free a year before i got dsl from verizon i think it was 2004 or 2005. and i was sooo happy to get rid of it!!

[903harman]

@xanafanadu omg i know!! XD aol is the worst! as well as every other dial up bullshit,you get free dial up with high-speed internet in case of emergency :P

[adnbek]

LOL @ keywords.

You'd tell an AOL user about a website you visited and they'd go "huh? What's a website? Is there a keyword for that?"

[illustriouschin]

i handled an AOL floppy disk one time and it gave me Herpes Simplex-R

[CarlTrooper]

ahh the good days of the internet ha

[SamJay57]

wow...

i remember the "free 10 hours"

and then once you went over, you had to pay 9.95 for every hour that you spent.

my bill was nearly 700 bucks!

[grimchain]

OMG that looks terible. I didnt have internet back in the 90s but wow

[TimelordR]

I once had my first experience with the Internet with AOL about a decade ago. But believe me, combing the web for porn on a dial-up connection SUCKS!

Thank God for Broadband!!

[whoo689]

LMAO! They increased the number of hours by FIVE. WOW! Amazing... o.o

[JasonK1992]

Sigh. Where I come from, no one had even heard about the internet back in '96.

[MasterChiefSquare]

That computer looks like Windows 95.

[topher33w]

Not even close.  It's Windows 3.11

[EdwR1]

Psh! Shit. Look at that title bar. That's definitely Windows 3.1 or similar

[xanafanadu]

i had windows 3.1 and it didnt even have a modem haha so when i tried installing it when i was like 5 i was very disappointed.

[mikethegamer]

HOLY SHIT EMAIL!!!!

LOL

SIGN ME UP!!

[Incognito1986]

Ahh...back when people downloaded pornography at 56K. Oh how we've evolved and sophisticated. :-)

[whitemage4ever]

I like how this commercial originally advertised 10 hours. Then they started offering 15 hour trials a year later, while still using the same commercial, and just editing the voice a little. And over the years it went from hours to days, and then days to weeks, and then weeks to months. AOL? More like LOL

[greylajoie23]

I C WAT U DID THAR!

[Pinwormx]

$4.00 and hour yo!!!!

[ddhboy2]

Damn, remember when people actually gave a shit about AOL? They kept sending out those install disks and AOL was pretty much synonymous with the internet. It actually became a pretty big myth that you needed AOL to access the full internet, like it was cable. Then high speed internet came and AOL refused to upgrade, and now they've been left in the dark compared to the phone and cable companies.

[boisvert593]

I like the 2008.

But I want to be in 2009.

In 17 Days

The 90's just sucks.

[frankwolftown]

What ever happen to those commercials where people are on the bus talking?  They talking about music and the Grateful Dead.

[Anglynn74]

I first got the internet in 1998, before I had been using it at the library. I've had the same screename now since the day I brought the computer into my house. I remember Telenet however, which was the days of early internet bac in the 80s, MUCH different. Hard to think us teens grew up not knowing what a "screename" or "e-mail" was. We survived though, we actually physically went out of the house instead of sitting in front of a computer all day.

[LocoYoFla]

I grew up in the 90's before internet and cell phones became mainstream with teens. Never thought I'd think of the 90's as "the good ol' days".. but they really were! I think the kids now have way too much "stimulation" with the internet creeping into every part of life.

[JonSchaffer57]

Agreed, I remember those days too.

[Incognito1986]

I remember using a typewriter to write papers....now that's ancient technology.

[SlightyDisturbedNBK]

Yea, the Facebook generation do have things good for them. I think the Internet of today has got much worse, it's too much 'mainstream' and memes are just plain stupid.

[HeroOFTime99]

I can haz srs?

[Slurm867]

hahahahahaha the 90's hahahahahaha

[yummymayo]

i've had the same user name since the days of aol 1.0... hard to believe!

[getskinnyy]

Yea, those 15 hours are to load up the start up page.

[yankee4321]

I want to go back to 1996!!!!!

[beaman220]

Its about to be America Off Line...

[largesatsuma]

I was only about 11 years old when we first got the internet. Such great memories.

[ElasticMinds]

same here, back in 1998! I think we had msn back in the day, man those were the days!

Dont forget Napster! the joys of downloading one song, in 1-2 hours!!!!! I even remember spending 12 hours to download one song from germany that I couldn't get anywhere else. thank god for broadband!

[jwemt81]

We got AOL 3.0 in 1995. I remember when my parents would get so mad at me for tying up the phone lines when I was on AOL until they finally got a second line for the computer. Those were the days!

[ELMERODONJUAN13]

aol sucks...now

[AgentEJA]

Wow, brings back a lot of teenage hood memories!

[jwemt81]

Same here! I was 14 or 15 at that time!

[jose65536]

A time when there were over 100 newspapers and magazines on the Internet, especially on AOL alone.

[jmsn2393]

i remember the days in the 90's when going on the internet was a scheduled event, mostly because it took 5 damn minutes for a page to load on AOL dialup

[misterfisherman]

i never knew they had the internet in 1996! hmmm no.computers were considered evil by dr flamesworth at our hospital(who died under mysterous circumstances involving a spong at the end of 1999 then we had dr fruitsworth who allowed computers hehehe.)

[PartySized]

Wow. I forgot how bad it was back then.

[Dirtfire]

Hehe, and before AOL there was Compuserve. Those commercials are on youtube too.

[BrandonC3]

15 free hours... wow, how many years do we have free now? Jeez.

[kilorat]

Call for a free disk... or just look in your mailbox, one is probably there, no matter how many times you throw it out.

[TheSims10]

*sigh*

A time when the internet was more simpler...

[widwag]

i hear ya ! i miss the old days !

[pwnwner]

seriously

[hachibeach151]

Of course he didn't know any better back then. But then again, most n00bs of the 90's didn't know any better either.

---

hb151.

[andyee]

This is laughable "great web browser" HA!