Editing NetZero (section)

== History ==
[[File:Logo of NetZero.svg|thumb|left|x70px|NetZero corporate logo used from October 19, 1998 to March 18, 2012]]
Netzero bought FreeInet around 1998. FreeInet was the first free national internet service provider. NetZero was launched in October 1998, founded by [[Ronald T. Burr]] (original CEO), Stacy Haitsuka, Marwan Zebian and Harold MacKenzie. 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. NetZero was the first company to invent real-time URL targeted advertising based on surfing patterns under US patent 6,366,298 <ref>{{cite web | title=URL Tracking Patent |url=https://patents.google.com/patent/US6366298 }}</ref> Monitoring of Individual Internet Usage. The founders raised $60 million in venture capital in four separate equity financings. Venture investors included idealab, [[Draper Fisher Jurvetson]], [[Foundation Capital]], Clearstone Venture Partners and [[Compaq]]. NetZero signed a distribution deal with Compaq and was the only ISP to be included in the [[out-of-box experience]] (OOBE). In September 1999, NetZero went public on the [[NASDAQ]] exchange with the symbol NZRO. Mark Goldston was hired as CEO, Charles Hilliard was hired as [[Chief financial officer|CFO]] and Ronald Burr took the position of President and Chief Technology Officer.

NetZero's most prominent advertising placement was as part of ''NetZero @ the Half'' for the ''[[NBA on NBC]]''{{'}}s [[halftime show]] in the early 2000s, replacing [[Prudential Financial|Prudential]].

In late 1999 several other companies began to copy the NetZero free access model including [[Juno Online Services]], (which since August 1996 had offered E-mail but not [[World Wide Web]] access for free), Spinway launched with [[Yahoo!]] and [[AltaVista]], [[Freei]] and [[Kmart (United States)|BlueLight Internet]], which was originally owned by [[Kmart (United States)|Kmart]]. 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.<ref>{{cite news|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/28/business/technology-netzero-sues-juno-online-in-a-patent-dispute-over-advertising.html|title=NetZero Sues Juno Online in a Patent Dispute Over Advertising|first=Matt|last=Richtel|newspaper=New York Times|date=December 28, 2000}}</ref> After the [[dot-com boom|dot-com bust]] in early 2000, 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]] and RocketCash.

Starting in January 2001, 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 merged with its rival [[Juno Online Services]] and created a new holding company, [[United Online]] which traded on NASDAQ under the symbol UNTD until Netzero was acquired by B. Riley Financial in July 2016. 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]] [[Browser Helper Object]]. In July 2005, NetZero introduced a service called "3G," standing for the "third generation of Internet." The company vaguely claimed it was so fast, "you wouldn't believe it wasn't [[broadband]]." As dial-up connections are subject to the limits of [[56k modem]]s, the service does not increase transmission speed. Instead, the service [[Link prefetching|prefetches]] [[HTML]] markup, [[JavaScript]] and other small files and [[Data compression|compresses]] them. Video, images, and other non-text files are not compressed. This technology also utilizes the user's [[browser cache|cache]] to prevent redownloading. A newer service, "NetZero DSL" was released soon after. In 2012, the company said they still had about 750,000 dial-up subscribers.<ref>[http://www.therepublic.com/view/story/b97a809ff51f46d1b74a3cae4dc2d83d/US-TEC-Free-Wireless-Broadband/ Free Wireless Broadband] The New Republic, March 19, 2012</ref>

NetZero has versions of its proprietary dial-up software for computers running [[Mac OS 9]] or [[Mac OS X]]. NetZero previously offered a Linux version of the NetZero software advertised as being for [[Linspire]], however the software could be installed on any [[Debian]]-based [[i386]] or [[x86-64]] [[Linux distribution]], NetZero can also be installed on any [[RPM Package Manager|RPM]]-based Linux distribution as long as [[Alien (file converter)|Alien]] 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. However the current Linux version of the dialer no longer functions properly with the service since 2009.