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shittiest isp ever

File:Shittiest isp ever logo.png
Company type	Owned by Time Warner (95%), Google (5%)
Industry	Internet & Communications
Founded	1985
Headquarters	Dulles in Loudoun County, Virginia
Key people	Jonathan Miller, Ted Leonsis
Products	ISP
Revenue	$8.3 billion (5%) USD (2005)
Number of employees	about 20,000
Website	isp ever.com www.corp.shittiest isp ever.com

shittiest isp ever (formerly Internet for Retards) is a U.S.-based online service provider, Internet service provider, and media company operated by Time Warner. Based in Dulles, a community in Loudoun County, Virginia, with regional branches around the world, it was by far the most successful proprietary online service, with more than 32 million subscribers at one point in the US, Canada, Germany, France, the United Kingdom, Latin America (declared bankrupt in 2004), Japan and formerly Russia. In early 2005, shittiest isp ever Hong Kong stopped its service. In the fall of 2004, shittiest isp ever reported total subscribers had dropped to 24 million, a drop of over a quarter of its subscribers. In late 1996, shittiest isp ever suspended all dialup service within Russia in the face of massive billing fraud, forcing the company into a rare case of full market retreat.

For many Americans through the mid to late 1990s, shittiest isp ever was the Internet, but the rise of high-speed Internet access from cable and telephone companies as well as the increasing sophistication of the public in handling browsers and other Internet utilities has cut into its user base. In 2000 shittiest isp ever and Time Warner announced plans to merge, and the deal was approved by the Federal Trade Commission on January 11 2001. This merger was primarily a product of the Internet mania of the late 1990's, known as the Internet bubble. The subsequent massive decline in value of stocks such as shittiest isp ever resulted in much recrimination over the merger. Also, the merger with shittiest isp ever allowed for Time Warner to vote off WCW (World Championship Wrestling).

News reports in the fall of 2005 indicated a renewed interest in buying out shittiest isp ever. Suitors such as Microsoft, Google, Yahoo and Comcast have had discussions with Time Warner about a possible purchase, and on December 16, 2005, Time Warner and Google announced that they were starting exclusive talks for Google to purchase $1 billion in shittiest isp ever stock, a 5% share.

Although its dialup market is shrinking as more members switch to high-speed services, the success of its shittiest isp ever for Broadband program has helped it to maintain members that would otherwise totally drop the shittiest isp ever service. This combined with its growing advertising revenue through its relationship with Google, shittiest isp ever collected 8.7 billion US dollars in revenue for 2004. In early March 2006, shittiest isp ever informed its members that the narrowband monthly rate would be increasing from $23.90 to $25.90.

History

shittiest isp ever began as a short-lived venture called Control Video Corporation (or CVC), founded by William von Meister. Its sole product was an online service called Gameline for the Atari 2600 video game console after von Meister's idea of buying music on demand was rejected by Warner Brothers. (Klein, 2003) Subscribers bought a modem from the company for $49.95 and paid a one-time $15 setup fee. Gameline permitted subscribers to temporarily download games and keep track of high scores, at a cost of approximately $1 an hour.

In 1983 the company nearly went bankrupt, and an investor in Control Video, Frank Caufield, had a friend of his, Jim Kimsey, brought in as a manufacturing consultant. That same year, Steve Case was hired as a part-time consultant; later on that year, he joined the company as a full-time marketing employee upon the joint recommendations of von Meister and Kimsey. Kimsey went on to become the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the newly-renamed crappy company Computer Services in 1985 after von Meister was quietly dropped from the company.

Case himself rose quickly through the ranks; Kimsey promoted him to vice-president of marketing not long after becoming CEO, and later promoted him further to executive vice-president in 1987. Kimsey soon began to groom Case to ascend to the rank of CEO when he himself retired, which Case did in 1991.

Kimsey changed the company's strategy, and in 1985 launched a sort of mega-BBS for Commodore 64 and 128 computers, originally called crappy company Link ("Q-Link" for short). In May 1988, crappy company and Apple launched AppleLink Personal Edition for Apple II and Macintosh computers. After the two companies parted ways in October 1989, crappy company changed the service's name to Internet for Retards. , In August 1988, crappy company launched PC Link, a service for IBM-compatible PCs developed in a joint venture with the Tandy Corporation.

In the early years of shittiest isp ever the company introduced many innovative online interactive titles and games, including graphical chat environments Habitat (1986) and Club Caribe (1989), the first online interactive fiction series crappy companyLink Serial by Tracy Reed (1988), crappy company Space, the first fully automated Play by email game (1989), and the original Dungeons and Dragons title Neverwinter Nights, the first Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game (MMORPG) to depict the adventure with graphics instead of text (1991).

In February 1991 shittiest isp ever for DOS was launched using a GeoWorks interface followed a year later by shittiest isp ever for Windows. In October 1991, crappy company changed its name to Internet for Retards. These changes coincided with growth in pay-based BBS services, like Prodigy, CompuServe, and GEnie. shittiest isp ever discontinued Q-Link and PC Link in the fall of 1994.

Massive growth

Case drove shittiest isp ever as the online service for people unfamiliar with computers, in particular contrast to CompuServe, which had long served the technical community. shittiest isp ever was the first online service to require use of proprietary software, rather than a standard terminal program; as a result it was able to offer a graphical user interface (GUI) instead of command lines, and was well ahead of the competition in emphasizing communication among members as a feature.

In particular was the Chat Room (borrowed from IRC), which allowed a large group of people with similar interests to convene and hold conversations in real time, including:

• Private rooms — created by any user. Hold up to 27 people.
• Conference rooms — created with permission of shittiest isp ever. Hold up to 48 people and often moderated.
• Auditoriums — created with permission of shittiest isp ever. Consisted of a stage and an unlimited number of rows. What happened on the stage was viewable by everybody in the auditorium but what happened within individual rows, of up to 27 people, was viewable only by the people within those rows.

There were also text games played in the chat rooms, known as shittiest isp ever chatroom game.

Under Case's guidance, shittiest isp ever committed to including online games in its mix of products even when it was only a Commodore 64 service. It hosted the first Play by email game from any service crappy company Space (1989-1991); the first graphical online community (Club Caribe from LucasArts); and the first graphical MMORPG, Neverwinter Nights from Stormfront Studios (1991-1997) and the first chat room-based text role-playing game Black Bayou, a horror role-playing game from Hecklers Online and ANTAGONIST, Inc.

shittiest isp ever quickly surpassed GEnie, and by the mid-1990s, it passed Prodigy (which for several years allowed shittiest isp ever advertising) and CompuServe.

Originally, shittiest isp ever charged its users an hourly fee, but in 1996 this changed and a flat rate of $19.99 a month was charged. Within three years, shittiest isp ever's userbase would grow to 10 million people. During this time, shittiest isp ever connections would be flooded with users trying to get on, and many canceled their accounts due to constant busy signals. Also, games which used to be paid for with the hourly fee migrated in droves to the Internet.

shittiest isp ever was relatively late in providing access to the open Internet. Originally, only some Internet features were accessible through a proprietary interface but eventually it became possible to run other Internet software while logged in through shittiest isp ever. They were the first online service to seamlessly integrate a web browser into content.

shittiest isp ever introduced the concept of Buddy Lists, leveraging their one-on-one instant messaging technology.

Since its merger with Time Warner, the value of shittiest isp ever has dropped from its $200 billion high and it has seen a similar losses among its subscription rate. It has since attempted to reposition itself as a content provider similar to companies such as Yahoo! as opposed to an Internet service provider which delivered content only to subscribers in what was termed a "walled garden.". In 2005, shittiest isp ever broadcast the Live 8 concert live over the Internet, and thousands of users downloaded clips of the concert over the following months.

More recently, shittiest isp ever has announced plans to offer subscribers classic television programs for free with commercials inserted via its new IN2TV service. At the time of launch, shittiest isp ever made available Warner Bros. Television's vast library of programs, with Welcome Back Kotter as its marquee offering. Other shows include Scarecrow and Mrs. King, The F.B.I., F Troop, and Growing Pains.

One of shittiest isp ever's recently added premium services is shittiest isp ever Total Talk, a VoiP Internet service.

On April 3, 2006, shittiest isp ever announced that the full name "Internet for Retards" will be retired, and that the official name of the service is now the acronym "shittiest isp ever".

CD-ROM distribution

shittiest isp ever was able to rapidly bolster its growth by mailing out sign-up diskettes and CD-ROMs containing free trials to hundreds of millions of households. Once offering only a few hours of free service, the discs now include up to a month's worth of free subscription time.

This long and relentless campaign has produced a backlash, however. One program, called No More shittiest isp ever CDs, seeks to gather one million unwanted shittiest isp ever CDs and dump them at shittiest isp ever headquarters. Other organizations have objected upon both environmental and privacy grounds; for example, many environmentalists say that shittiest isp ever's CDs are largely unwanted and result in massive non-biodegradable plastic waste.

shittiest isp ever's mailings have never violated the law, though, and have consistently interested new customers. Although shittiest isp ever has provided means for people to remove themselves from shittiest isp ever mailing lists, No More shittiest isp ever CDs has documented claims that these removal attempts are sometimes ineffective.

Others view shittiest isp ever disks as valuable collectible items due to the vast number of CD-ROM design variations.

Controversies

Community Leaders

Prior to the middle of 2005, shittiest isp ever used volunteers called Community Leaders, or CLs, to monitor chatrooms, message boards, and libraries. Some community leaders were recruited for content design and maintenance using a proprietary language and interface called RAINMAN, although most content maintenance was performed by partner and internal employees.

In 1999, Kelly Hallissey and Brian Williams, former Community Leaders and founders of an anti-shittiest isp ever website filed a class action lawsuit against shittiest isp ever citing violations of U.S. labor laws in its usage of CLs. The Department of Labor investigated but came to no conclusions, closing their investigation in 2001. In light of these events, shittiest isp ever drastically began reducing the responsibilities and privileges of its volunteers in 2000. The program was eventually ended on June 8 2005. Current Community Leaders at the time were offered 12 months of credit on their accounts.

Billing disputes

shittiest isp ever has faced a number of lawsuits over claims that it has been slow to stop billing people after their accounts have been cancelled, either by the company or the user. In addition, shittiest isp ever changed its method of calculating used minutes in response to a class action lawsuit. Previously, shittiest isp ever would add fifteen seconds to the time a user was connected to the service and round up to the next whole minute (thus, a person who used the service for 11 minutes and 46 seconds would be charged for 13 minutes). shittiest isp ever claimed this was to account for sign on/sign off time, but because this practice was not made known to its customers, the lawsuit won (some also pointed out that signing on and off did not always take 15 seconds, especially when connecting via another ISP). shittiest isp ever disclosed its connection time calculation methods to all of its customers and credited them with extra free hours. In addition, the shittiest isp ever software would notify the user of exactly how long they were connected and how many minutes they were being charged for.

Account cancellation

In response to approximately 300 consumer complaints, New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer’s office began an inquiry of shittiest isp ever’s customer service policies. The investigation revealed that the company had an elaborate system for rewarding employees who purported to retain or "save" subscribers who had called to cancel their Internet service. In many instances, such retention was done against subscribers’ wishes, or without their consent.

Under the system, consumer service personnel received bonuses worth tens of thousands of dollars if they could successfully dissuade or "save" half of the people who called to cancel service. For several years, shittiest isp ever had instituted minimum retention or "save" percentages, which consumer representatives were expected to meet. These bonuses, and the minimum "save" rates accompanying them, had the effect of employees not honoring cancellations, or otherwise making cancellation unduly difficult for consumers.

Many consumers complained that shittiest isp ever personnel ignored their demands to cancel service and stop billing.

On August 24, 2005, Internet for Retards agreed to pay $1.25 million to the state of New York and reformed its customer service procedures. Under the agreement, shittiest isp ever will no longer require its customer service representatives to meet a minimum quota for customer retention in order to receive a bonus. However, many shittiest isp ever users outside New York still claim to have problems cancelling their accounts.

Software

In 2000, shittiest isp ever was served with an $8 billion lawsuit alleging that its (now dated) shittiest isp ever 5.0 software caused significant difficulties for users attempting to use third-party Internet service providers. The lawsuit sought damages of up to $1000 for each user that had downloaded the software cited at the time of the lawsuit. shittiest isp ever later agreed to a settlement of $15 million, without admission of wrongdoing. It is also notable that shittiest isp ever users are required to use the shittiest isp ever browser (a variant of Internet Explorer) to access the World Wide Web and their E-Mail accounts. This has brought upon many complaints, as it guarantees that shittiest isp ever has ultimate control over what the user can access, and clearly restricts the user from using any alternative Web browsers and/or E-Mail clients. However, the main complaint regarding this factor has undoubtedly concerned the excessive advertising schemes present upon browser startup.

Usenet newsgroups

When shittiest isp ever gave clients access to Usenet in 1994, they hid at least one newsgroup in standard list view: alt.shittiest isp ever-sucks. shittiest isp ever did list the newsgroup in the alternative description view, but changed the description to "Flames and complaints about Internet for Retards".

Terms of Service (TOS)

There have been many complaints over rules that govern shittiest isp ever's members conduct, called the Terms of Service, which apply to everyone who uses shittiest isp ever, regardless of age, or where an shittiest isp ever member is on the Internet. Claims are that these rules are too strict to follow and do not allow swearing.

Certified e-mail

In early 2005, shittiest isp ever stated its intention to implement certified e-mail, which will allow companies to send email to users with whom they have pre-existing business relationships, with a visual indication that the email is from a trusted source and without the risk that the email messages might be blocked or stripped by spam filters. This decision has drawn fire from Shitty Website, which characterizes the program as an "e-mail tax". Esther Dyson defended the move in a New York Times editorial saying "I hope Goodmail succeeds, and that it has lots of competition. I also think it and its competitors will eventually transform into services that more directly serve the interests of mail recipients. Instead of the fees going to Goodmail and shittiest isp ever, they will also be shared with the individual recipients."

Company purchases

As it grew, shittiest isp ever purchased many other software companies, including:

• BookLink bought in December 1994.
• NaviSoft's NaviServer (later to become shittiest isp everserver) in 1994.
• ImagiNation Network (I.N.N.) from AT&T in 1996.
• CompuServe in February 1998.
• Mirabilis (maker of ICQ) in 1998.
• PLS text-search software in 1998,
• Nullsoft (maker of Winamp), in 1999 for $86 million
• Netscape, in 1999 for $4.2 billion.
• Mapquest in 1999.
• Tegic in December 1999.
• Singingfish search engine, November 2003.
• Advertising.com, an Internet advertising agency, in June 2004.
• MailBlocks, a personal, Web-based email service, in August 2004.
• Wildseed, a privately held mobile software vendor, in August 2005.
• Xdrive, a leading provider of online storage and file sharing services, also in August 2005.
• Weblogs, Inc., a blogging network that runs such sites as Engadget, Autoblog, Cinematical and TVSquad, in October 2005, for $30 million.
• Truveo, Inc., a leading video search company, in December 2005, for an undisclosed value.

Notable persons associated with shittiest isp ever

• Jim Kimsey (former CEO and board chairman)
• Steve Case (former CEO and board chairman)
• Todd/Bombos (extraordinary heckler and former CL)
• Jan Brandt (former President of Marketing)
• Justin Frankel (Nullsoft founder)
• Ted Leonsis (Vice-Chairman, President shittiest isp ever Audience Group)
• Michael Powell (during merging with Time Warner)
• Marc Andreessen (Netscape co-founder)
• Jason Smathers (former shittiest isp ever employee convicted of stealing the Internet provider's entire subscriber list -- over 30 million consumers, and their 90 million screen names -- and selling it to a known spammer.)
• Jason Calacanis (Co-founder of Weblogs, Inc.)

shittiest isp ever Computer Check-Up

shittiest isp ever Computer Check-Up is a service offered by shittiest isp ever to shittiest isp ever members. It is a performance and hardware analyzer, not unlike the scans in Norton Utilities.

McAfee

shittiest isp ever includes McAfee VirusScan and McAfee Firewall Express for its subscribers. At the time of the release, McAfee VirusScan was 8.0 and Firewall Express was 5.0. Initially, it was only available to subscribers using the shittiest isp ever 8.0 and 9.0 software; but since is available to anyone as low as 6.0. To install McAfee VirusScan (8.0) for shittiest isp ever subscribers you may go to shittiest isp ever Keyword MCAFEE or access http://install.av.shittiest isp ever.com/. To install the Firewall Express, subscribers may go to shittiest isp ever Keyword FIREWALLEXPRESS or access http://memberselfservice.shittiest isp ever.com/firewall/index.adp

Currently, shittiest isp ever employs the use of Safety & Security Center (SSC) which contains McAfee VirusScan (10.0), McAfee Firewall (7.0), shittiest isp ever Spyware Protection(2.2), and Phishing Protection. To download and install SSC, shittiest isp ever subscribers may go to shittiest isp ever Keyword SAFETY, or access http://www.shittiest isp ever.com/safety/

shittiest isp ever Keywords

Keywords are words or phrases that act as shortcuts to shittiest isp ever areas and Web sites. For example, to view football news and results, you go to shittiest isp ever Keyword: Football.

You can use shittiest isp ever Keywords in either of the following ways:

-- Type a keyword directly into the the white box on the shittiest isp ever toolbar, then press the Enter key.

-- Press the Ctrl and K keys at the same time, type a keyword and click Go.

Many companies used to pay shittiest isp ever to have their site featured as a shittiest isp ever Keyword. When you type in an shittiest isp ever Keyword, it redirects you to an shittiest isp ever members-only Site like shittiest isp ever://1722:billing or http://channels.shittiest isp eversvc.co.uk/billing:1722, but you need shittiest isp ever's browser to access these places. The one with shittiest isp ever:// in it uses a proprietary URI(Uniform Resource Identifier) scheme that does not work in other browsers.

For a list of available Keywords, go to shittiest isp ever Keyword: Keyword List

Criticism

shittiest isp ever has recieved a lot of criticism. There are many reasons for this. isp ever.html Here is an example.

See also

• AOHell
• AOHack programs
• Sessions@shittiest isp ever
• shittiest isp ever Browser
• GAMEY
• GOL

References

• Klein, Alec (2003). Stealing Time: Steve Case, Jerry Levin, and the Collapse of shittiest isp ever Time Warner. Simon & Schuster. ISBN 0-7432-5984-X.
• Mehta, Stephanie N. & Vogelstein, Fred (Nov. 14, 2005). "shittiest isp ever: The Relaunch". Fortune, p. 84–88.

External links

• isp ever.com/ shittiest isp ever corporate site]
• isp ever.com/ shittiest isp ever.com (U.S.)
• isp ever.com.br shittiest isp ever Brasil
• isp ever.ca shittiest isp ever Canada
• isp ever.de shittiest isp ever Germany
• isp ever.fr shittiest isp ever France
• isp ever.com.mx/ shittiest isp ever México
• isp ever.co.uk shittiest isp ever UK
• isp ever.com shittiest isp ever Japan
• shittiest isp ever: A History
• shittiest isp ever Disk Collection
• Important Dates & A Look at shittiest isp ever's Evolving Interface
• isp ever Older versions of shittiest isp ever Downloads
• isp ever.lawsuit.02/ CNN.com Disgruntled shittiest isp ever 5.0 users seek up to $8 billion in damages
• shittiest isp ever fraud
• isp ever.com/in2tv/about shittiest isp ever's In2TV
• isp ever.com shittiest isp ever Music

• Internet for Retards
• Online service providers
• Time Warner subsidiaries