In what appears to have been the largest online outage ever, 6.3 million America Online customers worldwide were left stranded when the system crashed for almost 19 hours.
The nation's largest online service didn't return until 8:45 p.m. MDT Wednesday, 18 hours and 45 minutes after it was taken off-line for what was supposed to be routine maintenance to install new software.Members will get credited for a lost day of service, said Steve Case, AOL chairman and chief operating officer.
The technical glitch left furious customers without their e-mail or access to their favorite Web sites. During the outage, frustrated users who had accounts on other online systems commiserated on a popular Internet bulletin board devoted to complaining about America Online.
"AOL DID IT AGAIN!" one writer lamented. "Wonder when AOLame will be back up?"
America Online stock dipped 25 cents to $34.621/2 a share by late morning on the Nasdaq Stock Market after rising 621/2 cents Wednesday during the outage.
The problem was different from a software glitch that brought down AOL's e-mail system for an hour on June 19, company spokeswoman Pam McGraw said. This time, it involved new host software, essential to the network's operating systems.