Internet users mourn iconic feature as AOL officially takes it offline
That sweet '90s nostalgia
Featured Image Credit: AOL
If you were born after the year 2000, you likely won't remember the early days of the internet boom and the horrors of trying to connect to the internet. It's easy to forget that we now have the power of a whole desktop in the palm of our hands thanks to smartphones, meaning that getting on the internet is as simple as opening an app.
This is a far cry from the ordeal of plugging in the internet and listening to that dreaded dial-up tone screeching down the phone line while your mom wanted to talk to her friends.
The introduction of broadband in the early '00s changed everything, and while you might assume dial-up is long gone, it's lived on in unexpected corners of the world. When you tend to think of dial-up internet, you'll likely remember AOL, loading up a 'free trial' disc, and jumping into chat rooms as you paid by the hour.
AOL previously warned that it would be shutting down its dial-up feature in 2025, but now, the final reckoning is here.
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As of Tuesday, September 30, AOL's dial-up internet is no more. The internet giant reiterated that it 'routinely evaluates' its features and had decided to axe dial-up alongside software that's "optimized for older operating systems.”
From September 30, help pages like “connect to the internet with AOL Dialer" now lead nowhere.
Still, with Elon Musk's Starlink supposedly giving internet to anyone, anywhere in the world, dial-up is just another piece of outdated technology that's confined to the scrapheap alongside DVDs, Betamax, and Sony Walkmans.
The New York Post reminds us that a small number of users still rely on dial-up internet. According to U.S. Census Bureau data, around 163,401 households were still using dial-up to get online in 2023. Even though this is just 0.13% of all homes that have internet subscriptions across the USA, it's still a loss being felt by the wider world.
With this piece of tech history shuffling off this mortal coil, tech fans took to social media to mourn its loss.
Posting on X, one person lamented: "Boomers. GenX. Older Millennials. Pour one out for AOL dial-up. End of an era."
Another added: "How did that only just happen? I would have thought it was 15 years ago or more!"
A third joked: " Thinking back to the 90s, I think we probably spent our first year getting our dial-up for free just by receiving those 500 hours of free discs in the mail."
AOL continues to move with the times and trim the fat. Dial-up's axe comes after the equally iconic AOL Instant Messenger was given the boot in 2017.
Now, dial-up internet joins the likes of Skype and BBM in the great tech graveyard in the sky.