Prodigy (online service)
Online service that operated from 1984 to 2001 / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Prodigy Communications Corporation was an online service from 1984 to 2001 that offered its subscribers access to a broad range of networked services. It was one of the major internet service providers of the 1990s.
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Company type | Public |
---|---|
Industry | Telecommunications |
Founded | February 13, 1984; 40 years ago (1984-02-13) (as Trintex) |
Fate | Defunct (part of AT&T Inc.) |
Headquarters | White Plains, New York, U.S. (earlier) Austin, Texas, U.S. |
Products | Telephone, Internet, Television |
The company claimed it was the first consumer online service, citing its graphical user interface and basic architecture as differentiation from CompuServe, which started in 1979 and used a command-line interface.[1] Prodigy was described by the New York Times as "family-oriented" and one of "the Big Three information services" in 1994.[2] By 1990, it was the second-largest online service provider with 465,000 subscribers, trailing only CompuServe's 600,000.[3] In 1993 it was the largest.[4]
In 2001, it was acquired by SBC Communications, which in 2005 became the present iteration of AT&T. The Mexican branch of Prodigy, however, was acquired by Telmex.