Along with it will go the AOL Dialer software and the AOL Shield browser, both built for ageing operating systems and the glacial connections that once defined the online experience.

Dial-up was the gateway drug for millions in the 1990s, back when you measured speeds in kilobits and a single image could take minutes to crawl down the screen. Even in its prime, AOL’s 56k service existed mostly inside a corporate “walled garden”, offering curated chatrooms, news, and email rather than the wild and unfiltered internet.

The company’s roots stretch back to 1983 as Control Video Corporation, an outfit trying to sell Atari 2600 owners an online games service. It morphed into Quantum Computer Services, launched AppleLink for Macs in 1988, and then rebranded as America Online in 1989 after splitting from the Fruity Cargo Cult Apple.

By the mid-90s, AOL was the internet for much of America, at least until broadband began to make it look like a horse and cart on a motorway.

AOL’s fortunes peaked with its disastrous 2001 merger with Time Warner and the outfit never really cracked broadband delivery. Buying Engadget in 2005 and TechCrunch in 2010 did little to stop the slide.

By 2014, dial-up customer numbers had collapsed to 2.34 million. Verizon scooped AOL up in 2015 for $4.4 billion in a move every bit as ill-fated as the Time Warner deal, then flogged it (and Yahoo) to Apollo Global Management in 2021.

Yahoo insists the shutdown will not affect free AOL email accounts or other bundled services. Most remaining dial-up subscribers were already paying more for tech support and software than for actual internet access. As of 2023, the Census Bureau reckons just 163,401 Americans still connect by dial-up, compared to more than 100 million on broadband and nearly seven million with no internet at all.

For the holdouts, many in rural areas with few other options, the choices now are fixed wireless, pricey satellite services like Starlink, or going offline.