AOL was trying to promote their AOL 9.0 Optimized “Talk” feature for Instant Messenger back in 2003 (it was a new concept at the time), and chose a Lars Ulrich and James Hetfield love story for the commercial (see bel0w). The commercial centers around Ulrich and Hetfield trying to express their feelings for one another before landing on the line “I’m madly in anger with you” from the single “St. Anger.” Of course the two call each other via the “Talk” feature to work on the song and off they go.
Overall it’s a pretty funny watch nearly two decades later, if only for the extremely early-2000s haircut both Ulrich and Hetfield are sporting. This was also a weird time between Metallica and the Internet, given the band had filed their legendary lawsuit against Napster three years prior.
Revisiting it now feels even more poignant given that AOL dial-up will officially shut down on September 30, 2025, according to a statement on the AOL website. It’s the end of a service that, since launching in 1991, was synonymous with “getting online” for millions.
“AOL routinely evaluates its products and services and has decided to discontinue Dial-up Internet,” the Yahoo-owned company announced. “This service will no longer be available in AOL plans. As a result, on September 30, 2025, this service and the associated software — the AOL Dialer software and AOL Shield browser, which are optimized for older operating systems and dial-up internet connections — will be discontinued.”
For context, AOL Instant Messenger (AIM, sometimes stylized as “aim”) was one of the internet’s first big instant messaging platforms, using the proprietary OSCAR and TOC protocols to let users chat in real time. By the late ’90s, AIM was the way for teens and college students to stay connected, with its iconic away messages serving as a mix of status update, inside joke, and party invite.
AIM’s popularity waned in the 2000s and 2010s as AOL’s subscriber base shrank and competition from Gmail’s Google Talk, SMS, and social networks like Facebook took over. Its decline mirrored that of other once-massive internet platforms like Myspace.
AOL was acquired by Verizon Communications in June 2015, and two years later was merged with Yahoo under Verizon’s Oath Inc. (now simply Yahoo). AOL officially shut down AIM on December 15, 2017.
