The story
Founded by General Electric in 1985.1
Early history
GEnie was founded by Bill Louden on October 1, 1985 and was launched as an ASCII text-based service by GE's Information Services division in October 1985, and received attention as the first serious commercial competition to CompuServe. Louden was originally CompuServe's product manager for Computing, Community (forums), Games, eCommerce, and email product lines. Louden purchased DECWAR source code and had MegaWars developed, one of the earliest multi-player online games (or MMOG), in 1985.
The service was run by General Electric Information Services (GEIS, now GXS) based in Rockville, Maryland. GEIS served a diverse set of large-scale, international, commercial network-based custom application needs, including banking, electronic data interchange and e-mail services to companies worldwide, but was able to run GEnie on their many GE Mark III time-sharing mainframe computers that otherwise would have been underutilized after normal U.S. business hours. This orientation was part of GEnie's downfall. Although it became very popular and a national force in the on-line marketplace, GEnie was not allowed to grow. GEIS executives steadfastly refused to view the service as anything but "fill in" load and would not expand the network by a single phone line, let alone expand mainframe capacity, to accommodate GEnie's growing user base. (Later, however, GE did consent to make the service available through the SprintNet time-sharing network, which had its own dial-up points of presence; an Internet-to-SprintNet gateway operated by Merit Network also made the text-based parts of the service available through telnet.)
Initial Prices
The initial price for connection, at both 300 bits per second and the then-high-speed 1,200 bits per second, was $5–6 per hour during "non-prime-time" hours (evenings and weekends) and $36 an hour (to discourage daytime use) otherwise, later adjusted to $6 per hour and $18 per hour, respectively. A speed of 2,400 bit/s was also available at a premium. Later, GEnie developed the Star*Services package, soon renamed Genie*Basic after Prodigy threatened a trademark lawsuit over the use of the word "Star". It offered a set of "unlimited use" features for $4.95 per month. Other services cost extra, mirroring the tiered service model popular at the time.
Early Growth
By May 1986, GEnie claimed to have 12,000 subscribers, up from 3,000 in February. Although it for years was the second-largest service provider after CompuServe, GEnie failed to keep up when Prodigy and America Online produced graphics-based online services that drew the masses. Programs such as Aladdin, which had been developed earlier by an independent developer and eventually supported by GEnie, helped many of the newcomers who came to GEnie from Prodigy and AOL adjust; these were the equivalent of modern-day email programs and newsreaders, incorporating a more user-friendly interface which automated message and mail downloading and posting.
In addition, GEnie took its time developing an Internet e-mail gateway, which opened on July 1, 1993.
Sale to Yovelle
GE sold GEnie in 1996 to Yovelle, which was later taken over by IDT Corp. IDT attempted to transition GEnie (now branded "Genie" without the all-uppercase "GE") to an Internet service provider, but ultimately failed. IDT also funded the development of a GUI for the text-based service; this client was actually released, but the service did not survive long enough for it to become popular.
Price increases
Visitors to GEnie dropped with the growth of other online services and fell dramatically following a very sudden change in the fee structure in 1996. The users were notified with only 12 hours' notice that all Basic (flat-rate) services would cease to exist, while prices of the other services would rise dramatically. By the final year, insiders reported fewer than 10,000 total users.
Closure
On December 4, 1999, it was announced that GEnie would close for good on December 27 due to the year 2000 problem. Remaining users gathered in chat areas of the few RoundTables remaining to say goodbye. But GEnie did not close for four more days, and a dwindling number watched at the close of each day. The RoundTables and all areas of GEnie, except the Top page, became unavailable slightly before midnight on December 30, 1999.
From Wikipedia’s article on GEnie, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.3