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Evolution of AOL 1983 Control Video Corporation (CVC) was founded by William von Meister and ran a short-lived online service for Atari 1985 After CVC dissolved , a new company was founded as Quantum Computer Services, which ran QuantumLink 1989 Quantum unified its individual internet services under a single product, branding the platform as America Online 1993 During Steve Case 's years as CEO in the early 1990s, the company adopted AOL as its corporate name, went public , and launched its free trial CD campaign 1995 AOL gradually shifted from being a closed-off proprietary network into a major ISP for the World Wide Web 1997 CompuServe , a major competitor, was acquired, single-handedly eliminating AOL's biggest rival in dial-up internet 1999 At its absolute peak, AOL reached a market valuation of $222 billion, and acquired a slew of internet companies like Netscape , MovieFone and MapQuest 2001 With its dot-com era stock, AOL acquired Time Warner, the largest traditional media conglomerate , in what was the single largest merger at the time 2003 AOL Time Warner , as the merged company was called, suffered from the end of the Dot-com bubble , which led to heavy losses and goodwill write-downs .2009 Time Warner spent several years pivoting AOL towards digital advertising before spinning it off due to declining revenue2015 Verizon acquired AOL with plans to reposition the company as a major advertising tech business2017 Yahoo was acquired by Verizon and consolidated with AOL into Oath Inc. 2019 Oath was rebranded as Verizon Media to emphasize closer branding with its corporate parent and improve synergy 2021 Apollo Global acquired Verizon Media, and rebranded it Yahoo Inc , with AOL continuing as an operating subsidiary 2026 Bending Spoons acquired AOL from Yahoo to expand its portfolio of legacy internet assets and later went public
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