. for net zero buildings see zero energy building . netzero netzero logo used since 2013 type subsidiary industry internet service provider founder ronald t. burr stacy a haitsuka harold r mackenzie marwan a zebian headquarters los angeles california u.s. area served united states europe india canada partial key people rusty taragan president revenue us 225 000 000 2013 parent united online website www.netzero.net netzero is an internet service provider based in woodland hills los angeles california . it is a subsidiary of united online which in turn is a subsidiary of investment bank b. riley financial . 1 united online is also the parent of juno online services and bluelight internet services . contents 1 history 2 evolution into wireless 3 see also 4 references 5 external links history edit original netzero corporate logo used from 1998 to 2013 netzero bought freeinet around 1998 . freeinet was the first free national internet service provider . netzero was launched in october 1998 founded by ronald t. burr original ceo stacy haitsuka marwan zebian and harold mackenzie . the first national free internet service provider netzero grew to 1 000 000 users in six months . netzero s model was free internet access to attract an audience for highly targeted advertising . the ad serving technology has over nine patents and netzero was the first company to invent real time url targeted advertising based on surfing patterns under us patent 6 366 298 2 monitoring of individual internet usage . the founders raised 60 million in venture capital in four separate equity financings . venture investors included idealab draper fisher jurvetson foundation capital clearstone venture partners and compaq . netzero signed a distribution deal with compaq and was the only isp to be included in the out of box experience oobe . in september 1999 netzero went public on the nasdaq exchange with the symbol nzro . mark goldston was hired as ceo charles hilliard was hired as cfo and ronald burr took the position of president and chief technology officer . in december 1999 netzero and nbc sports agreed to a major deal that would see netzero replace prudential financial as the sponsor for the network s nba halftime studio show titled netzero the half which gave netzero a much larger audience for its product . in late 1999 several other companies began to copy the netzero free access model including juno online services which for years when had offered e mail but not world wide web access for free spinway launched with yahoo and altavista freei and bluelight internet which was originally owned by kmart . they claimed to offer free internet service forever in exchange for displaying ads either on a permanent toolbar or on a banner that was shown when online . netzero sued them for infringing on a banner ad patent . 3 after the dot com bust in early 2001 netzero acquired its competitors as each went bankrupt . in addition netzero acquired aimtv which displayed full video quality 30 second ad spots as well as simpli and rocketcash . starting in january 2001 netzero began charging for access time over 40 hours per month . users who exceeded 40 hours were directed to the company s platinum service which provided unlimited access for 9.95 per month . with the income statement reinvigorated through charging heavier users of the system netzero merged with its rival juno online services and created a new holding company united online which now trades on nasdaq under the symbol untd . netzero later lowered the threshold for their free service to 10 hours per month . in june 2005 the company released a new client that replaced the advertising bar with an internet explorer browser helper object . in july 2005 netzero introduced a service called 3g standing for the third generation of internet . the company charged 9.95 per month for the service vaguely claiming it was so fast you wouldn t believe it wasn t broadband . as dial up connections are subject to the limits of 56k modems the service does not increase transmission speed . instead the service prefetches html markup javascript and other small files and compresses them . video images and other non text files are not compressed . this technology also utilizes the user s cache to prevent redownloading . a newer service netzero dsl was released soon after . in 2012 the company said they still had about 750 000 dial up subscribers . 4 netzero has versions of its proprietary dial up software for computers running mac os 9 or mac os x. netzero previously offered a linux version of the netzero software advertised as being for linspire however the software could be installed on any debian based i386 or x86 64 linux distribution ; netzero can also be installed on any rpm based linux distribution as long as alien is used to convert the netzero debian package into an rpm package . in addition the linux version requires the java runtime environment to be installed prior to use of the netzero dialer . however the current linux version of the dialer no longer functions properly with the service since 2009 . evolution into wireless edit while continuing to provide nationwide dial up access service and dsl broadband service in march 2012 netzero launched a mobile broadband service for users who purchase their hardware using the clearwire network . 5 it has since expanded the service across the nationwide sprint 3g network and also launched a home wireless broadband service which is intended to provide wireless access in the home or office . in 2013 it debuted netzero datashield a personal virtual private network which encrypts and protects users data when they connect to the internet via any wifi connection including public wifi hubs . citation needed see also edit los angeles portal companies portal comparison of webmail providers webmail privatephone references edit b. riley financial completes acquisition of united online . pr newswire . retrieved july 3 2016 . url tracking patent . richtel matt december 28 2000 . netzero sues juno online in a patent dispute over advertising . new york times . free wireless broadband the new republic march 19 2012 netzero to launch free wireless by peter svensson ap technology writer external links edit official website cnet can a free net service survive october 19 1998 retrieved from https en.wikipedia.org w index.php title netzero & oldid 743512805 categories companies established in 1998internet service providers of the united statescompanies based in los angeleshidden categories vague or ambiguous time from march 2015all articles with unsourced statementsarticles with unsourced statements from february 2016 navigation menu personal tools not logged intalkcontributionscreate accountlog in namespaces article talk variants views read edit view history more search navigation main pagecontentsfeatured contentcurrent eventsrandom articledonate to wikipediawikipedia store interaction helpabout wikipediacommunity portalrecent changescontact page tools what links hererelated changesupload filespecial pagespermanent linkpage informationwikidata itemcite this page print export create a bookdownload as pdfprintable version languages fran ais edit links this page was last modified on 10 october 2016 at 00 31 . text is available under the creative commons attribution sharealike license ; 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