AOL Mail (stylized as Aol Mail.) is a free web-based email service provided by AOL, a division of

Yahoo Yahoo! (, styled yahoo''!'' in its logo) is an American web services provider. It is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California and operated by the namesake company Yahoo! Inc. (2017–present), Yahoo Inc., which is 90% owned by investment funds ma ...

Features

AOL Mail has the following features available: * Email attachment limit: 25 MB * Max mailbox size: Unlimited * Supported protocols:

POP3 In computing, the Post Office Protocol (POP) is an application-layer Internet standard protocol used by e-mail clients to retrieve e-mail from a mail server. POP version 3 (POP3) is the version in common use, and along with IMAP the most comm ...

SMTP The Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) is an Internet standard communication protocol for electronic mail transmission. Mail servers and other message transfer agents use SMTP to send and receive mail messages. User-level email clients typic ...

IMAP In computing, the Internet Message Access Protocol (IMAP) is an Internet standard protocol used by email clients to retrieve email messages from a mail server over a TCP/IP connection. IMAP is defined by . IMAP was designed with the goal of pe ...

* Link to other email accounts from other service providers (such as Gmail and Hotmail). * Ads: are displayed while working with the email account. Embedded links within emails are automatically disabled and can only be activated by the email user. * Spam protection *

Virus A virus is a wikt:submicroscopic, submicroscopic infectious agent that replicates only inside the living Cell (biology), cells of an organism. Viruses infect all life forms, from animals and plants to microorganisms, including bacteria and ...

protection * Spell checking * Domains: @aol.com and previously @love.com, @ygm.com (short for you've got mail), @games.com, and @wow.com * Supports

TLS TLS may refer to: Computing * Transport Layer Security, a cryptographic protocol for secure computer network communication * Thread level speculation, an optimisation on multiprocessor CPUs * Thread-local storage, a mechanism for allocating vari ...

HTTPS Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS) is an extension of the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP). It is used for secure communication over a computer network, and is widely used on the Internet. In HTTPS, the communication protocol is e ...

after login If an AOL Mail account is inactive for 90 days, it may become deactivated, at which point any emails sent to it may not be delivered and may be returned to sender. After 180 days of inactivity, the account may be deleted.

History

In 1993, both America Online (AOL) and

Delphi Delphi (; ), in legend previously called Pytho (Πυθώ), in ancient times was a sacred precinct that served as the seat of Pythia, the major oracle who was consulted about important decisions throughout the ancient classical world. The oracl ...

started connecting their proprietary e-mail services to the

Internet The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a ''internetworking, network of networks'' that consists ...

. As of October 1997, AOL Mail was the world's largest e-mail provider, with around 9 million subscribers (identical with the number of AOL subscribers). In 1997, AOL launched NetMail, a web-based version of its e-mail service. It was initially criticized for only working on

Internet Explorer Internet Explorer (formerly Microsoft Internet Explorer and Windows Internet Explorer, commonly abbreviated IE or MSIE) is a series of graphical user interface, graphical web browsers developed by Microsoft which was used in the Microsoft Wind ...

, but a later

Java Java (; id, Jawa, ; jv, ꦗꦮ; su, ) is one of the Greater Sunda Islands in Indonesia. It is bordered by the Indian Ocean to the south and the Java Sea to the north. With a population of 151.6 million people, Java is the world's mo ...

-written version ensured compatibility with

Netscape Navigator Netscape Navigator was a web browser, and the original browser of the Netscape line, from versions 1 to 4.08, and 9.x. It was the flagship product of the Netscape Communications Corp and was the dominant web browser in terms of usage share in ...

. The service was renamed AOL Mail on the Web in December 1999. In January 2001, an e-mail alert service for text-based digital cellphones and pagers was launched. In 2004, AOL tested a new free webmail service for the public, without the need of customers subscribing to AOL. This was done in an effort to compete better against MSN Hotmail, Yahoo! Mail and

Gmail Gmail is a free email service provided by Google. As of 2019, it had 1.5 billion active user (computing), users worldwide. A user typically accesses Gmail in a web browser or the official mobile app. Google also supports the use of email clien ...

. The service launched in May 2005 under the name AIM Mail, with 2 gigabytes of mail storage and tightly integrated with

AOL Instant Messenger AIM (AOL Instant Messenger) was an instant messaging and presence computer program created by AOL, which used the proprietary OSCAR instant messaging protocol and the TOC protocol to allow registered users to communicate in real time. AIM wa ...

(AIM). It is based on technology from MailBlocks, which AOL acquired in 2004. From August 2006, AOL became entirely free of charge for broadband users. The same month, Netscape Mail was migrated to AIM Mail. In November 2010, AOL released Project Phoenix, an email application program that features a Quick Bar where emails, text messages, and AOL Instant Messenger messages can be sent from one area. It also lets people add up to five accounts into it. In 2012, AOL released the

Alto Mail Alto Mail was a multi-service email client and proprietary email intelligence engine built to analyze and restructure incoming emails and calendar events by Oath Inc. It supported IMAP email providers like Gmail, Microsoft Outlook, Outlook, Yahoo, ...

software. As of July 2012, there were 24 million AOL Mail users. By 2021, the number of paying users had dropped to 1.5 million. On March 16, 2017, Verizon, which had acquired AOL in 2015, announced that it would discontinue its in-house email services for internet subscribers, and migrate all customers to AOL Mail.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Aol Mail

Mail The mail or post is a system for physically transporting postcards, letter (message), letters, and parcel (package), parcels. A postal service can be private or public, though many governments place restrictions on private systems. Since the mid ...

Features

History

See also

References

External links