History
Juno was founded in May 1996 by Charles Ardai, with equity capital provided by the D.E. Shaw Group and headquarters in the same Midtown Manhattan building as Shaw. In August 1996, it began a free e-mail service–a customer would install the proprietary Juno client which would allow them to send and receive email of about 35 kilobytes in size. Version 1 did not offer attachments or other features. The user could write emails with the Juno client and would periodically sign in by dial-up. Upon doing so, the Juno client would upload any emails the user had written, download any new incoming emails in the online mailbox, and download targeted advertisements, which were displayed in the client. This was similar to "QWK" and similar less automated offline readers that had been used for years by BBSes to save phone line connect time.
In June 1998, Juno expanded its service to offer premium support for paying subscribers, and added the ability to not only use email, but browse the web. In December 1999, Juno began to offer the same service (minus technical support) for free, provided the user ran the Juno client, which displayed a bar containing advertisements for the majority of the time that the user was online. Juno later placed limits on how much its free internet service could be used in a month. Free service is currently limited to a maximum of 10 hours per month.
With the collapse of the 1990s Dot-com bubble, Internet advertising revenues declined and the company shifted emphasis to offering discount Web and mail services similar to large ISPs, but at half the price.
Juno stock began trading on NASDAQ in May 1999, under the symbol JWEB. In June 2001, Juno and NetZero announced a merger. The two had been in litigation over the patent held by Netzero to provide free internet access by using an Ad bar. Netzero had the patent but Juno, with 6 Million members, was far larger. Eventually they choose to merge rather than continue to fight in court. By September 2001, the two companies were merged into United Online and both JWEB and NZRO were delisted.
Read more about this topic: Juno Online Services
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“I believe that in the history of art and of thought there has always been at every living moment of culture a “will to renewal.” This is not the prerogative of the last decade only. All history is nothing but a succession of “crises”Mof rupture, repudiation and resistance.... When there is no “crisis,” there is stagnation, petrification and death. All thought, all art is aggressive.”
—Eugène Ionesco (b. 1912)
“It is true that this man was nothing but an elemental force in motion, directed and rendered more effective by extreme cunning and by a relentless tactical clairvoyance .... Hitler was history in its purest form.”
—Albert Camus (1913–1960)
“[Men say:] “Don’t you know that we are your natural protectors?” But what is a woman afraid of on a lonely road after dark? The bears and wolves are all gone; there is nothing to be afraid of now but our natural protectors.”
—Frances A. Griffin, U.S. suffragist. As quoted in History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 4, ch. 19, by Susan B. Anthony and Ida Husted Harper (1902)