Steve Case

Steve Case (born August 21, 1958) is the founder of America Online, the world's most successful proprietary online service. He was ousted as CEO in January 2003 following financial troubles and accounting scandals.

Case grew up in Honolulu, Hawaii, showing an early entreprenurial bent. He studied political science at Williams College in Massachusetts, and in 1980 began worked as a marketer at Procter and Gamble. In 1983 he became a video-game specialist at Control Video, a small company that distributed games for the Atari 2600 game console using a phone line and modem. Case became CEO when this company was almost bankrupt. He changed the company's strategy, creating an online service called Quantum Link for the Commodore 64, and renamed the company Quantum Computer Service. In 1988, Quantum began offering online services for Apple and IBM compatible computers. In 1991 he changed the company name to America Online. The service reached 1 million subscribers in 1994.

After a decade of hyper-growth, AOL merged with media giant Time Warner. The $106 billion merger was completed in January, 2001 but quickly ran into trouble as part of the dot-com recession, compounded by accounting scandals. Case announced his resignation as CEO in January 2003.

Case is the cousin of Hawaii Congressman Ed Case. [1]