germany.net

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germany.net

logo
legal form GmbH
founding 1994
resolution 2001
Seat Frankfurt am Main
management Michaela Merz and Stephan Hess
Branch Internet

germany.net was one of the early online services in Germany .

germany.net was founded in 1994 by Michaela Merz and Stephan Hess in Frankfurt am Main . The service had more than 500,000 participants in 1999. They could surf the German part of the Internet free of charge , only the telephone charges to the nearest dial-in node (there were up to 30 regional PoPs , which were replaced by nationwide numbers in 1999 at the beginning of the call-by-call age) had to be paid by the user. This “free” access was a specialty at that time ( Compuserve , T-Online and AOL also billed by minutes in addition to the incurred telephone charges; there were only a few providers who offered flat rates for around 30 DM). Similar to AOL, dial-up software was offered on CD to make it easier for beginners to access the Internet. Experienced users could also use the dial-up network newly developed in Windows 95 , which was a significant improvement over the Chameleon Dialer under Windows 3.1 . Other operating systems supported were Mac OS and Linux. However, access to the internet at germany.net was limited: All traffic had to go through a proxy, which sporadically displayed advertisements (through which the offer was financed). The use of services such as Telnet or IRC was not possible. Access to the international Internet was also possible via a volume-dependent premium tariff . Germany.net later offered some features (for example IRC access via SOCKS proxy) for a fee, but the offer never provided full Internet access.

Under the name germany.net IP services, stand and dial line access were also offered for business customers. The accesses were of course transparent without a proxy. Roaming users could also use the infrastructure of germany.net via GRIC dial. Other services for business customers were the provision of web space and e-mail.

germany.net established many online offers that are taken for granted today. For example, variable data (such as the name of the user) were incorporated directly into websites , the small wallet made it possible to buy information and services as early as 1995, and Deutsche Bahn AG timetables (such as automatic travel bookings and reports from various news services) were online for the first time put online via germany.net. By placing advertising pages (ad breaks), forms of online marketing were developed and used quite early on .

The management of germany.net was initially able to win RWE and later also Deutsche Bank as investors. In 1998 germany.net was completely taken over by o.tel.o , the telecommunications service of RWE Telliance and Vebacom ( VEBA ). With the sale of o.tel.o to Mannesmann Arcor on April 1, 1999 for 2.25 billion DM (1.15 billion euros), germany.net also switched to Arcor with 600,000 customers and was renamed Arcor Online at the end of 2001. A year earlier, the Nexgo brand was launched, which was supposed to combine the three online services of germany.net, otelo and Arcor with the concept of a personal internet assistant (PIA) called a unified messaging portal under the umbrella of the Nexgo web portal . A few months later, the online brand Nexgo was replaced by Arcor, with the characteristic PIA control wheel remaining as a navigation element until the end of 2007.

Michaela Merz was the last founder to leave the company in 1999.

The germany.net e-mail addresses (in the form @ germanynet.de ) can still be used today via the successor service Vodafone. The wallet existed until March 2017 and was discontinued after the money was paid out.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Germany.Net offers free worldwide access to the Internet - computerwoche.de. In: computerwoche.de. IDG Business Media GmbH, June 15, 1998, accessed January 28, 2017 .
  2. ^ Peter Siering: germany.net: Internet gratis. In: Heise. Heise AG, September 2, 1996, accessed on March 26, 2017 .
  3. ↑ File: Gn Pop Alboinstrasse.jpg Germany.Net PoP with Ascend dial-up router
  4. ↑ GRIC Dial ISP-Locator Germany. (No longer available online.) In: web.archive.org. Wayback Machine, August 15, 2000; archived from the original on August 15, 2000 ; accessed on March 18, 2017 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.gric.com
  5. ↑ RWE Group Annual Report 1997-1998 p. 64. In: RWE AG. RWE AG, June 30, 1998, accessed on March 18, 2017 .
  6. ^ Christian Persson: Arcor takes over o.tel.o. In: Heise. Heise AG, April 2, 1999, accessed on March 26, 2017 .
  7. ↑ RWE Group Annual Report 1998-1999 p. 4 Events of the year. In: RWE AG. RWE AG, September 23, 1999, accessed on March 18, 2017 .