GEnie, Prodigy, and the Rise of AOL
The history of early online services is recalled, specifically the GEnie service launched by General Electric in 1985. Comparisons are made between GEnie, Prodigy (a joint venture involving Sears), and CompuServe before the graphical user interface of AOL eventually dominated the market. The transition from text-based accounts to the modern web and the impact of the dot-com crash are noted.
genie· prodigy· aol· compuserve· general electric· sears· online services
00:00 But the podcaster, podcaster, let him through. Let him go. Adam Curry, John C. Dvorak. It's Sunday, April 5th, 2020. This is your award winning Get My Nation Media assassination episode 1231. This is no agenda. Debunking the data and broadcasting almost live from Opportunity Zone 33 here in the frontier of Austin, Texas, capital of the drone star state. In the morning everybody, I'm Adam Curry. And from Northern Silicon Valley where I'm remembering the once king. of the online services. I'm John C. Dvorak. It's Crackpot and Buzzkill. You killed me, man. This is what you're thinking of? The genie service from General Electric back in the days of Prodigy? Yeah, Prodigy is another one. Yeah. Well, Prodigy was Sears, wasn't it?
00:50 Sears there's a it was three companies. They were doing a joint as a joint venture with Sears and two others I can't remember who they were right and then but then genie hand did genie ever make it past the floppy disks Well, they went what do you think? What would you think their years of existence were gosh? I really don't know that's a good I've you know AOL we know prodigy I think it closed after a couple of years had the weird graphics, but genie no I don't remember 1985 it came out and it ended until the end of 1999. Huh. Yeah. Who still has a genie? Did they even have email back then? It was just an account. It was not even an email address at the time. No, they had a whole system. It was very much like CompuServe.
01:44 Another before all of them went graphical. I mean once AOL came out with the GGU I which stalled the internet I mean the web came out by then it was rolling along to say the least because he had the dot-com crash from the web right and at the same time you had these other services that were Kind of struggling with how to how to incorporate the mouse and how to get traction and then AOL just kind of wiped them all out and AOL it was thought to be the Operation was gonna take over the web was a joke. Oh, no Even a even a well thought that you've got mail. I know you don't want that dangerous internet. Well, here's a here's a word way He works he would and keywords the way to go exactly I got these new headphones, which I'm still trying to get used to All right one of our producers turned me on to the Neura headphones and you are a
