AOL Waves Goodbye To CompuServe

AOL finally pulled the plug on CompuServe, one of the very first Internet portals.

For anyone around in the early days of the commercial Internet, CompuServe was a familiar name. Along with AOL (the simply known as America Online), it was one of the main Internet portals, offering e-mail and dial-up online access until it was taken over by AOL in the mid ‘90s.

But last week, AOL closed the door on that piece of history, as CompuServe died after an impressive 30-year history. AOL urged CompuServe subscribers – and yes, there were still a few – to switch to its CompuServe 2000 brand.

Begun in 1979, by the early 1990s, CompuServe could boast 500,000 people online simultaneously, quite a feat for those times of dial-up modems. But, as The Register pointed out, it was soon surpassed by AOL, and never recovered, being taken over in 1997.