AOL is an American web portal and online service provider based in New York City, and a brand marketed by Yahoo! Inc.
The original incarnation of Yahoo! Inc. was an American multinational technology company headquartered in Sunnyvale, California. Yahoo was founded by Jerry Yang and David Filo in January 1994 and was incorporated on March 2, 1995. Yahoo was one of the pioneers of the early internet era in the 1990s. Marissa Mayer, a former Google executive, served as CEO and President of Yahoo from 2012 until June 2017.
Prodigy Communications Corporation was an online service from 1984 to 2001 that offered its subscribers access to a broad range of networked services. It was one of the major internet service providers of the 1990s.
Jagex Limited is a British video game developer and publisher based at the Cambridge Science Park in Cambridge, England. It is best known for RuneScape and Old School RuneScape, both free-to-play massively multiplayer online role-playing games. The company's name is derived from the company's original slogan, "Java Gaming Experts".
Yahoo! Games was a section of the Yahoo! website, launched on March 31, 1998, in which Yahoo! users could play games either with other users or by themselves. The majority of Yahoo! Games was closed down on March 31, 2014, and the balance was closed on February 9, 2016. Yahoo! announced that "changes in supporting technologies and increased security requirements for our own Yahoo! web pages, made it impossible to keep the games running safely and securely". It was then announced by Yahoo! that its games section would be dissolved completely on May 13, 2016. However, the Yahoo! games service is still available on Yahoo! Japan, along with Yahoo! Auctions.
GameSpy was an American provider of online multiplayer and matchmaking middleware for video games founded in 1999 by Mark Surfas. After the release of a multiplayer server browser for Quake, QSpy, Surfas licensed the software under the GameSpy brand to other video game publishers through a newly established company, GameSpy Industries, which also incorporated his Planet Network of video game news and information websites, and GameSpy.com.
Flickr is an image hosting and video hosting service, as well as an online community, founded in Canada and headquartered in the United States. It was created by Ludicorp in 2004 and was previously a common way for amateur and professional photographers to host high-resolution photos. It has changed ownership several times and has been owned by SmugMug since April 20, 2018.
GameSpy Arcade was a shareware multiplayer game server browsing utility. GameSpy Arcade allowed players to view and connect to available multiplayer games, and chat with other users of the service. It was initially released by GameSpy Industries, on November 13, 2000, to replace the aging GameSpy3D and Mplayer.com program. Version 2.0.5 was the latest offering of the software, boasting additional features such as increased speed and advanced server sorting abilities.
Xfire was a proprietary freeware instant messaging service for gamers that also served as a game server browser with various other features. It was available for Microsoft Windows. Xfire was originally developed by Ultimate Arena based in Menlo Park, California.
Hellgate: London is a dark fantasy themed action role-playing game originally developed by Flagship Studios, released on October 31, 2007. It was developed by a team led by former Blizzard Entertainment employees, some of whom had overseen the creation of the Diablo series. The original release of the game was co-published by Namco Bandai Games and Electronic Arts.
LogMeIn Hamachi is a virtual private network (VPN) application developed and released in 2004 by Alex Pankratov. It is capable of establishing direct links between computers that are behind network address translation (NAT) firewalls without requiring reconfiguration. Like other layer 2 VPNs, it establishes a connection over the Internet that emulates the connection that would exist if the computers were connected over a local area network (LAN).
Yahoo! Music was a brand under which Yahoo! provided music services including Internet radio, a digital music store, music streaming service, media player software, and original programming.
Yahoo! Maktoob was an online services company founded in Amman (Jordan). Maktoob.com was known as the first Arabic–English email service provider. In 2009, Yahoo! acquired Maktoob.com, making it Yahoo!'s official arm in the MENA region. As of 31 January 2023, Yahoo! Maktoob has been shut down; and therefore no longer publishes content.
Mplayer, referred to as Mplayer.com by 1998, was a free online PC gaming service and community that operated from late 1996 until early 2001. The service at its peak was host to a community of more than 20 million visitors each month and offered more than 100 games. Some of the more popular titles available were action games like Quake, Command & Conquer, and Rogue Spear, as well as classic card and board for more casual gamers. Servers and matchmaking was provided through a proprietary client. Initially, the service was subscription-based, but by early 1997, they became the first major multiplayer community to offer games to be played online through their network for free. This was done by relying on advertisement-based revenues.
The use of the BitTorrent protocol for the unauthorized sharing of copyrighted content generated a variety of novel legal issues. While the technology and related platforms are legal in many jurisdictions, law enforcement and prosecutorial agencies are attempting to address this avenue of copyright infringement. Notably, the use of BitTorrent in connection with copyrighted material may make the issuers of the BitTorrent file, link or metadata liable as an infringing party under some copyright laws. Similarly, the use of BitTorrent to procure illegal materials could potentially create liability for end users as an accomplice.
eyeOS was a web desktop for cloud computing, whose main purpose is to enable collaboration and communication among users. It is mainly written in PHP, XML, and JavaScript. It is a private-cloud application platform with a web-based desktop interface. eyeOS delivers a whole desktop from the cloud with file management, personal management information tools, and collaborative tools, with the integration of the client's applications.
InstantAction was a web gaming site and digital distributor featuring 3D, browser-based games.
Discord is an instant messaging and VoIP social platform which allows communication through voice calls, video calls, text messaging, and media. Communication can be private or take place in virtual communities called "servers". A server is a collection of persistent chat rooms and voice channels which can be accessed via invite links. Discord runs on Windows, macOS, Android, iOS, iPadOS, Linux, and in web browsers. As of 2024, the service has about 150 million monthly active users and 19 million weekly active servers. It is primarily used by gamers, although the share of users interested in other topics is growing. As of March 2024, Discord was the 30th most visited website in the world with 22.98% of its traffic coming from the United States. In March 2022, Discord employed 600 people globally.
Stadia was a cloud gaming service developed and operated by Google. Known in development as Project Stream, the service debuted through a closed beta in October 2018, and publicly launched in November 2019. Stadia was accessible through Chromecast Ultra and Android TV devices, on personal computers via the Google Chrome web browser and other Chromium-based browsers, Chromebooks and tablets running ChromeOS, and the Stadia mobile app on supported Android devices. There was also an experimental mode with support for all Android devices that were capable of installing the Stadia mobile app. In December 2020, Google released an iOS browser-based progressive web application for Stadia, enabling gameplay in the Safari browser.
