After 20 years, AOL Instant Messenger will be discontinued effective Dec. 15, 2017, the company announced Friday. "If you were a '90s kid, chances are there was a point in time when [AIM] was a huge part of your life," wrote Michael Albers, the communications products vice president at Oath, which owns AOL. "You likely remember the CD, your first screen name, your carefully curated away messages, and how you organized your buddy lists. Right now you might be reminiscing about how you had to compete for time on the home computer in order to chat with friends outside of school."
With alternatives like texting, Google Hangouts, Slack, and Facebook Messenger, "it's hard to imagine that many people are still using AIM, so ... this upcoming shutdown [isn't] likely to make a huge difference," The Verge writes. Rather, AIM's termination marks an end of an era: "In the late 1990s, the world had never seen anything like it," Albers wrote. "And it captivated all of us." Jeva Lange
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
-
Test driving the Rolls-Royce Spectre Black BadgeThe Week Recommends We take the most powerful Rolls-Royce ever built for a spin in Barcelona
-
Tuberculosis is seeing a resurgence, and it's only going to get worseUnder the radar The spread of the deadly infection is buoyed by global unrest
-
Sudoku hard: April 03, 2025The Week's daily hard sudoku puzzle
-
Markets notch worst quarter in years as new tariffs loomSpeed Read The S&P 500 is on track for its worst month since 2022 as investors brace for Trump's tariffs
-
Tesla Cybertrucks recalled over dislodging panelsSpeed Read Almost every Cybertruck in the US has been recalled over a stainless steel panel that could fall off
-
Crafting emporium Joann is going out of businessSpeed Read The 82-year-old fabric and crafts store will be closing all 800 of its stores
-
Trump's China tariffs start after Canada, Mexico pausesSpeed Read The president paused his tariffs on America's closest neighbors after speaking to their leaders, but his import tax on Chinese goods has taken effect
-
Chinese AI chatbot's rise slams US tech stocksSpeed Read The sudden popularity of a new AI chatbot from Chinese startup DeepSeek has sent U.S. tech stocks tumbling
-
US port strike averted with tentative labor dealSpeed Read The strike could have shut down major ports from Texas to Maine
-
Biden expected to block Japanese bid for US SteelSpeed Read The president is blocking the $14 billion acquisition of U.S. Steel by Japan's Nippon Steel, citing national security concerns
-
Judges block $25B Kroger-Albertsons mergerSpeed Read The proposed merger between the supermarket giants was stalled when judges overseeing two separate cases blocked the deal
