Millennials, pour one out. TMZ reports that Elwood Edwards, the voice behind AOL’s iconic “You’ve Got Mail” audio message, has died at age 74. His former employer, WKYC-TV Studios in Cleveland, confirmed that Edwards died of an unknown illness.
Elwood is said to have worked at WKYC-TV in Ohio for years operating cameras and working graphics, among other roles. In 1989 he was paid $200 to record four different lines for AOL, then a burgeoning provider of dial-up internet and a web portal: “Welcome,” “You’ve Got Mail,” “Files Done,” and “Goodbye.” Sometimes AOL would trigger the “You’ve Got Mail” message even if you didn’t have mail, which would always get the heart pumping in those adolescent courtship days.
AOL was an internet pioneer back in the ’90s, bringing many people online for the first time. It introduced the public to new forms of communication, like instant messaging and chat rooms. Portals were a big idea back then — Prodigy and CompuServe also offered a broad range of online services like email, for a fee.
At its peak in 2001, the company bought Time Warner for $85.4 billion in what was the largest and most disastrous merger in modern history. The companies hoped that merging AOL’s internet infrastructure with Time Warner’s content would create an unstoppable powerhouse. But then the dot com bubble burst, and AOL was losing subscribers rapidly to faster broadband internet while simultaneously trying to merge the diametrically opposed cultures of the two companies. People were also moving away from visiting portals and onto the open web, thanks to Google. AOL’s valuation plummeted from $226 billion to just $20 billion in short order. Through a series of ownership changes, AOL today is a small subsidiary of Yahoo, which is itself owned by private equity firm Apollo.
It just goes to show you how major platform shifts can do a number on companies that aren’t able to adapt. Some people think that AI is about to be Google’s AOL moment.
AOL may live in the dustbin of history, but Elwood’s iconic “You’ve Got Mail” remains in the hearts and minds of many. He last made an appearance on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon back in 2015. Now it’s time for us to say “Goodbye” to Elwood himself:
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