Thousands of years, pour one. TMZ reports that Elwood Edwards, the voice behind AOL’s “You’ve Got Mail” audio message, has died at age 74. His former employer, WKYC-TV Studios in Cleveland, confirmed that Edwards died of an unknown illness.
Elwood is said to have worked at WKYC-TV in Ohio for years working in camera and motion pictures, among other roles. In 1989 he was paid $200 to record four different lines for AOL, then a booming dial-up Internet provider and Web site: “Welcome,” “You’ve Got Mail,” “Files Done,” and “Goodbye.” Sometimes AOL would start a “You have e-mail” message even if you didn’t have e-mail, which always made the heart skip a beat in those teenage dating days.
AOL was an Internet pioneer in the ’90s, bringing many people online for the first time. It introduces the community to new forms of communication, such as instant messaging and chat rooms. Web sites were a big idea at the time – Prodigy and CompuServe also offered a wide range of Internet services such as e-mail, for a fee.
At its peak in 2001, the company bought Time Warner for $85.4 billion in what was the largest and worst merger in modern history. The companies hoped that combining AOL’s Internet infrastructure with Time Warner’s content would create an unstoppable force. But then the dot bubble burst, and AOL was rapidly losing subscribers to fast broadband Internet while simultaneously trying to merge the two companies’ fiercely opposed cultures. People were also moving from visiting portals to the open web, thanks to Google. AOL’s value dropped from $226 billion to $20 billion in a short period of time. Through a series of ownership changes, AOL is today a subsidiary of Yahoo, which is itself owned by the private equity firm Apollo.
It will show you how big platform shifts can do a toll on companies that can’t adapt. Some people think that AI is going to be Google’s AOL moment.
AOL may be in the dustbin of history, but Elwood’s “You’ve Got Mail” is still in the hearts and minds of many. Last seen The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon back in 2015. Now it’s time to say “goodbye” to Elwood himself:
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