January 25, 2001

8:00 AM

The year is 1995, and GE Information Services is looking to sell off its unprofitable online service GEnie. (Here is a rate sheet.) GEnie Lamp Apple II offers some thoughts on the sale, and here is a synopsis of the big online services after GEnie's demise (choice quotes abound!)
posted by hijinx (8 comments total)

With the CRTC's authorization of competition between telephone and cable TV companies, it's only a matter of time before you'll be offered one-stop shopping for all your communications needs, a flat-rate plan for cable TV, local telephone service and Internet access.

Scary. I call that "AT&T".
posted by hijinx at 8:03 AM on January 25, 2001

Aargh.
posted by rcade at 8:19 AM on January 25, 2001

GEnie went straight downhill, vertically, after being sold off to IDT. They failed to adapt with the times; net access was spotty. However, it held on till 2000 somehow; final messages from the SFRT.
posted by hijinx at 8:22 AM on January 25, 2001

IDT made some sort of deal with Brother to bundle Genie access (the GE went away after it was sold) with their word processors, which could also use a modem. There was a pretty good influx of Brother users and they couldn't really use much else, so a lot of them stayed.
posted by kindall at 9:28 AM on January 25, 2001

I would say any service that asks you to "rub the lamp" to login might not be around too much longer.
posted by jasonshellen at 11:46 AM on January 25, 2001

They did pretty well with that slogan for, oh, fifteen years, I think...
posted by kindall at 1:16 PM on January 25, 2001

Whoa... reminds me of the days of running up my mom's credit card on QuantumLink with my ole' trusty c-64.

And to think that the hours she paid for is about half the time I spend online in ONE DAY now!
posted by punkrockrat at 3:20 PM on January 25, 2001