NetZero

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NetZero

NetZero is an Internet service provider

Internet service provider

An Internet service provider is a company that offers its customers access to the Internet. The ISP connects to its customers using a data transmission technology appropriate for delivering Internet Protocol datagrams, such as dial-up, DSL, cable modem or dedicated high-speed interconnects....
based in Woodland Hills, California. It is a subsidiary

Subsidiary

A subsidiary, in business matters, is an entity that is controlled by a bigger and more powerful entity. The controlled entity is called a company , corporation, or limited liability company, and the controlling entity is called its parent ....
of United Online

United Online

Juno Online Services

Juno is an Internet service provider based in the United States. It is a subsidiary of United Online, which also owns NetZero and Bluelight Internet Services....
and BlueLight Internet Services

Kmart

Kmart is a chain of discount department stores in the United States, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and Guam. The chain merged with Sears, Roebuck and Company in 2005, creating the Sears Holdings Corporation....
. The current (2007) chairman, president, and CEO of United Online (and thus NetZero) is Mark Goldston.

ero launched in October 1998, founded by Ronald T Burr

Ronald T Burr

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Encyclopedia

NetZero is an Internet service provider

Internet service provider

Subsidiary

United Online

Juno Online Services

Juno is an Internet service provider based in the United States. It is a subsidiary of United Online, which also owns NetZero and Bluelight Internet Services....
and BlueLight Internet Services

Kmart

Kmart is a chain of discount department stores in the United States, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and Guam. The chain merged with Sears, Roebuck and Company in 2005, creating the Sears Holdings Corporation....
. The current (2007) chairman, president, and CEO of United Online (and thus NetZero) is Mark Goldston.

History

NetZero launched in October 1998, founded by Ronald T Burr

Ronald T Burr

Ronald Terry Burr is an American entrepreneur, holder of 6 internet patents and the co-founder and original chief executive officer of NetZero currently the worlds 3rd largest Internet Service Provider....
, Stacy Haitsuka, Marwan Zebian and Harold MacKenzie. The first free internet service provider NetZero grew to 1,000,000 users in six months. NetZero's model was free internet access to attract an audience for highly targeted advertising. The ad serving technology has over 9 patents and NetZero was the first company to invent real-time URL targeted advertising based on surfing patterns. NetZero signed a distribution deal with Compaq

Compaq

Compaq Computer Corporation was an United States personal computer company founded in 1982, and is now a brand name of Hewlett-Packard Company....
and was the only ISP to be included in the OOBE Out-Of-Box Experience

Out-Of-Box Experience

The term Out-of-Box Experience usually refers to computer computer hardware or software. It describes the experience a user has when installing and/or performing initial configuration on a piece of computer hardware or software....
. In September 1999 NetZero went public on the NASDAQ exchange with the symbol NZRO. Mark R. Goldston was hired as CEO and Ronald T Burr

Ronald T Burr

Ronald Terry Burr is an American entrepreneur, holder of 6 internet patents and the co-founder and original chief executive officer of NetZero currently the worlds 3rd largest Internet Service Provider....
took the position of President and Chief Technology Officer.

In late 1999 several other companies began to copy the NetZero free access model including Juno Online Services

Juno Online Services

Juno is an Internet service provider based in the United States. It is a subsidiary of United Online, which also owns NetZero and Bluelight Internet Services....
, Spinway launched with Yahoo!

Yahoo!

Yahoo! Inc. is an United States public company corporation with headquarters in Sunnyvale, California, , and provides Internet services worldwide....
and AltaVista

AltaVista

AltaVista is an Internet search engine company , and that company's search engine product....
, Freei

Freei

Freei was a free Internet Service Provider from 1998-2000. In 2000, FreeInternet.com was acquired by United Online, Inc. . In 2008, United Online re-launched FreeInternet.com as a Web site dedicated to free and discounted retail offers....
and BlueLight Internet

Kmart

Kmart is a chain of discount department stores in the United States, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and Guam. The chain merged with Sears, Roebuck and Company in 2005, creating the Sears Holdings Corporation....
. They claimed to offer free Internet service forever, in exchange for displaying ads, either on a permanent toolbar or on a "banner" that was shown when online. NetZero sued them for infringing on a banner ad patent. After the dotcom bust in early 2001, NetZero acquired its competitors as each went bankrupt. In addition NetZero acquired AimTV which displayed full video quality 30 second ad spots as well as Simpli

Simpli

Simpli was an early search engine that offered disambiguation to search terms. A user could enter in a search term that was ambiguous and the search engine would return a list of alternatives ....
and RocketCash.

Starting in January 2001, after the crash of internet advertising, NetZero began charging for access time over 40 hours per month. Users who exceeded 40 hours were directed to the company's "Platinum" service, which provided unlimited access for $9.95 per month. With the income statement reinvigorated through charging heavier users of the system, NetZero acquired its rival Juno Online Services

Juno Online Services

Juno is an Internet service provider based in the United States. It is a subsidiary of United Online, which also owns NetZero and Bluelight Internet Services....
and created a new holding company, United Online

United Online

United Online is a Woodland Hills, California, company formed by the 2001 merger of NetZero and Juno Online Services. The company owns 50megs.com, BlueLight Internet Services and Classmates Online, Inc., the operator of Classmates.com, StayFriends.de, StayFriends.se and Trombi.com....
which now trades on NASDAQ under the symbol UNTD. NetZero later lowered the threshold for their free service to 10 hours per month.

In June 2005, the company released a new client that replaced the advertising bar with an Internet Explorer

Internet Explorer

Windows Internet Explorer , commonly abbreviated to IE, is a series of graphical user interface web browsers developed by Microsoft and included as part of the Microsoft Windows line of operating systems starting in 1995....
browser helper object

Browser Helper Object

A Browser Helper Object is a Library Module designed as a plugin for Microsoft's Internet Explorer web browser to provide added functionality....
. In July 2005, NetZero introduced a service called "3G," standing for the "third generation of Internet". The company charged $9.95 per month for the service, vaguely claiming it was so fast, "you wouldn't believe it wasn't broadband

Broadband

The term broadband can have different meanings in different contexts. The term's meaning has undergone substantial shifts....
". As dial-up connections are suject to the limits of 56k modem

56K modem

56k modems are voiceband modems nominally capable of download speeds up to 56 kbit/s . At the beginning of the 21st Century, most personal computers contained one, their use declining as broadband technologies such as DSL gain wider availability....
s, the service does not increase transmission speed. Instead, the service pre-fetches

Link prefetching

Link prefetching is a draft standards compliant mechanism used by some web browsers, which utilizes browser idle time to download or prefetch documents that the user might visit in the near future....
HTML

HTML

HTML, an Acronym and initialism of HyperText Markup Language, is the predominant markup language for Web pages. It provides a means to describe the structure of text-based information in a document?by denoting certain text as links, headings, paragraphs, lists, and so on?and to supplement that text with interactive forms, embedded '...
markup, JavaScript

JavaScript

JavaScript is a scripting language widely used for client-side web development. It was the originating Programming language dialect of the ECMAScript standard....
and other small files and compresses

Data compression

In computer science and information theory, data compression or source coding is the process of encoding information using fewer bits than an code representation would use through use of specific encoding schemes....
them. Video, images, and other non-text files are not compressed. This technology also utilizes the user's cache

Cache

In computer science, a cache is a collection of data duplicating original values stored elsewhere or computed earlier, where the original data is expensive to fetch or to compute, compared to the cost of reading the cache....
to prevent redownloading.

NetZero also has versions of its proprietary dial-up software for computers running Mac OS 9

Mac OS 9

Mac OS 9 is the final major release of Apple Inc. "Classic" Mac OS. Introduced on October 23 1999, Apple positioned it as "The Best Internet Operating System Ever," highlighting Apple Sherlock Internet search capabilities, integration with Apple's free online services known as .Mac, and improved Open Transport networking....
or Mac OS X

Mac OS X

Mac OS X is a line of computer operating systems developed, marketed, and sold by Apple Inc., and since 2002 has been included with all new Macintosh computer systems....
. The Linux version of the NetZero software is advertised as being for Linspire

Linspire

Linspire, previously known as LindowsOS, was a commercial operating system based on Debian and later Ubuntu. Linspire was published by Linspire, Inc....
, however the software can be installed on any Debian

Debian

Debian GNU/Linux is one of the most popular and influential computer operating systems composed of free software and open source software....
-based i386 or x86-64

X86-64

x86-64 is a superset of the x86. x86-64 Central processing units can run existing 32-bit or 16-bit x86 programs at full speed, but also support new programs written with a 64-bit address space and other additional capabilities....
Linux distribution

Linux distribution

A Linux distribution is a member of the family of Unix-like software distributions built on top of the Linux kernel. Such distributions consist of a large collection of software applications such as word processors, spreadsheets, media players and database applications....
; NetZero can also be installed on any RPM

RPM Package Manager

RPM Package Manager is a package management system. The name RPM refers to two things: a software package file format, and software packaged in this format....
-based Linux distribution as long as Alien

Alien (software)

alien is a computer program that converts between different Linux package formats. It supports conversion between Linux Standard Base, RPM Package Manager, deb , Stampede , Solaris and Slackware packages....
is used to convert the NetZero Debian package into an RPM package. In addition, the Linux version requires the Java Runtime Environment to be installed prior to use of the NetZero dialer.

NetZero

History

See also

External links