AOL's dial up internet takes its last bow, marking the end of an era
[October 02, 2025] By
WYATTE GRANTHAM-PHILIPS
NEW YORK (AP) — It's official: AOL's dial-up internet has taken its last
bow.
AOL previously confirmed it would be pulling the plug on Tuesday (Sept.
30) — writing in a brief update on its support site last month that it
“routinely evaluates" its offerings and had decided to discontinue
dial-up, as well as associated software “optimized for older operating
systems,” from its plans.
Dial-up is now no longer advertised on AOL's website. As of Wednesday,
former company help pages like “connect to the internet with AOL Dialer”
appeared unavailable — and nostalgic social media users took to the
internet to say their final goodbyes.
AOL, formerly America Online, introduced many households to the World
Wide Web for the first time when its dial-up service launched decades
ago, rising to prominence particularly in the 90s and early 2000s.
The creaky door to the internet was characterized by a once-ubiquitous
series of beeps and buzzes heard over the phone line used to connect
your computer online — along with frustrations of being kicked off the
web if anyone else at home needed the landline for another call, and an
endless bombardment of CDs mailed out by AOL to advertise free trials.
Eventually, broadband and wireless offerings emerged and rose to
dominance, doing away with dial-up's quirks for most people accessing
the internet today — but not everyone.

A handful of consumers have continued to rely on internet services
connected over telephone lines. In the U.S., according to Census Bureau
data, an estimated 163,401 households were using dial-up alone to get
online in 2023, representing just over 0.13% of all homes with internet
subscriptions nationwide.
While AOL was the largest dial-up internet provider for some time, it
wasn't the only one to emerge over the years. Some smaller internet
providers continue to offer dial-up today. Regardless, the decline of
dial-up has been a long time coming. And AOL shutting down its service
arrives as other relics of the internet's earlier days continue to
disappear.
Microsoft retired video calling service Skype just earlier this year —
as well as Internet Explorer back in 2022. And in 2017, AOL discontinued
its Instant Messenger — a chat platform that was once lauded as the
biggest trend in online communication since email when it was founded in
1997, but later struggled to ward off rivals.
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An AOL logo is seen in the company's office in Hamburg, Germany,
Jan. 12, 2010. (AP Photo/Axel Heimken, File)
 AOL itself is far from the dominant
internet player it was decades ago — when, beyond dial-up and IMs,
the company also became known for its “You’ve got mail” catchphrase
that greeted users who checked their inboxes, as famously displayed
in the 1998 film starring Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan by the same name.
Before it was America Online, AOL was founded as Quantum Computer
Services in 1985. It soon rebranded and hit the public market in
1991. Near the height of the dot-com boom, AOL's market value
reached nearly $164 billion in 2000. But tumultuous years followed,
and that valuation plummeted as the once-tech pioneer bounced
between multiple owners. After a disastrous merger with Time Warner
Inc., Verizon acquired AOL — which later sold AOL, along with Yahoo,
to a private equity firm.
AOL now operates under the larger Yahoo name. A spokesperson for
Yahoo didn't have any additional statements about the end of AOL's
dial-up when reached by The Associated Press on Wednesday —
directing customers to its previous summer announcement.
At the time Verizon sold AOL in 2021, an anonymous source familiar
with the transaction told CNBC that the number of AOL dial-up users
was “in the low thousands" — down from 2.1 million when Verizon
first moved to acquire AOL in 2015, and far below peak demand seen
back in the 90s and early 2000s. But beyond dial-up, AOL continues
to offer its free email services, as well as subscriptions that
advertise identity protection and other tech support.
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