It was spun off as a separate company in 1975, trading on the NASDAQ under the symbol CMPU.Ĭoncurrently, the company recruited executives who shifted the focus from offering time-sharing services, in which customers wrote their own applications, to one that was focused on packaged applications. The company's objectives were twofold: to provide in-house computer processing support to Golden United Life Insurance and to develop as an independent business in the computer time-sharing industry, by renting time on its PDP-10 midrange computers during business hours.
Other early recruits from the University included Sandy Trevor (inventor of the CompuServe CB Simulator chat system), Doug Chinnock, and Larry Shelley. Goltz and Wilkins were both graduate students in electrical engineering at the University of Arizona. Wilkins replaced Goltz as CEO within the first year of operation. Though Golden United founder Harry Gard Sr.'s son-in-law Jeffrey Wilkins is widely miscredited as the first president of CompuServe, its first president was actually John R. in Columbus, Ohio, as a subsidiary of Golden United Life Insurance.
8 WorldCom acquisition and deal with AOLĬompuServe was founded in 1969 as Compu-Serv Network, Inc.In 2017, after Verizon completed its acquisition of Yahoo!, CompuServe became part of Verizon's newly formed Oath Inc. In 2015, Verizon acquired AOL, including its CompuServe division. A complex deal was worked out with WorldCom acting as a broker, resulting in CIS being sold to AOL. In 1997, 17 years after H&R Block had acquired CIS, the parent announced its desire to sell the company. It also was known for its introduction of the GIF format for pictures and as a GIF exchange mechanism.
At its peak in the early 1990s, CIS was known for its online chat system, message forums covering a variety of topics, extensive software libraries for most computer platforms, and a series of popular online games, notably MegaWars III and Island of Kesmai. It dominated the field during the 1980s and remained a major influence through the mid-1990s. 1969–2009 American online service providerġ969 53 years ago ( 1969) (as Compu-Serv Network, Inc.)ĬompuServe ( CompuServe Information Service, also known by its initialism CIS) was an American online service provider, the first major commercial one in the United States – described in 1994 as "the oldest of the Big Three information services (the others are Prodigy and America Online)."