| Type | Subsidiary |
|---|---|
| Headquarters | Newark, New Jersey, United States |
| Industry | Internet service provider |
| Parent | United Online |
| Website | http://www.juno.com/ |
| Alexa rank | 3100 (May 2011[update][1]) |
Juno is an Internet service provider based in the United States. It is a subsidiary of United Online, which also owns NetZero and Kmart's BlueLight internet service.
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Juno was founded in May 1996 by Charles Ardai, with equity capital provided by the D.E. Shaw Group and headquarters in the same Midtown Manhattan building as Shaw. In August 1996, it began a free e-mail service–a customer would install the proprietary Juno client which would allow them to send and receive email of about 35 kilobytes in size. Version 1 did not offer attachments or other features. The user could write emails with the Juno client and would periodically sign in by dial-up. Upon doing so, the Juno client would upload any emails the user had written, download any new incoming emails in the online mailbox, and download targeted advertisements, which were displayed in the client. This was similar to "QWK" and similar less automated offline readers that had been used for years by BBSes to save phone line connect time.
In June 1998, Juno expanded its service to offer premium support for paying subscribers, and added the ability to not only use email, but browse the web. In December 1999, Juno began to offer the same service (minus technical support) for free, provided the user ran the Juno client, which displayed a bar containing advertisements for the majority of the time that the user was online. Juno later placed limits on how much its free internet service could be used in a month. Free service is currently limited to a maximum of 10 hours per month.[2]
With the collapse of the turn of the century Dot-com bubble, advertising revenues declined and the company shifted emphasis to offering discount Web and mail services similar to large ISPs, but at half the price.
Juno stock began trading on NASDAQ in May 1999, under the symbol JWEB. In June 2001, Juno and NetZero announced a merger. The two had been in litigation over the patent held by Netzero to provide free internet access by using an Ad bar. Netzero had the patent but Juno, with 6 Million members, was far larger. Eventually they choose to merge rather than continue to fight in court. By September 2001, the two companies were merged into United Online and both JWEB and NZRO were delisted.
The client software was updated many times in the late 1990s. Version 1.49 was final for Windows 3.1, except for a date problem that was fixed in version 1.51. Versions 4.0.11 and 5.0.33 were final for Windows 95 and later. Version 4 had attachments and a spell checker, and displayed fonts and colors. For old messages, it had storage folders, each stored in a separate file containing up to 1000 messages.
Version 5 added an ineffective integral twit/spam filter and the ability to write messages in chosen fonts and colors with inline images. It stored its old messages in a different format, with one large file for all messages. When disk free space was not several times larger than the message file, it often suffered "folder collapse" in which all messages returned to the "Inbox" or disappeared.
As of December 1, 2004, use of an e-mail client such as the Juno client, Microsoft Outlook Express, or Eudora is no longer free. Users who wish to use an e-mail client instead of Juno's web-based e-mail interface must either pay for Juno Platinum or Juno Megamail.[3]
The Juno client software version 5.0 build 33 would not work with Internet Explorer 7.[4] However, by the time Microsoft released the final version of IE7, Juno had released Juno 5.0 build 49, which resolves the issues with IE7 and makes it compatible with Windows Vista.[5] Version 8, compatible with Windows 7, was released in 2009. The proprietary mailers were only slightly supported in the 21st century, and users were expected to use POP3 standard mail clients.
Juno has released (along with NetZero) a service that purports to make the web browsing faster. The only noticeable change is the ability to display pictures at lower resolutions, thereby speeding up page loads.
No version of Juno's offline mail reader was made to use third party utilities to scan for viruses, clean out E-mail spam among messages already downloaded. Versions 5 and 8 can weed downloaded email messages individually by exact email address matches; there are no wildcards, boolean exclusion-filters or routing features. The company opened a spamdesk to help screen spam at the servers, thus minimizing the amount of spam received by the Juno client.
While the Juno client software can back up e-mails and addresses, it does not support exporting these to other clients, nor do other clients support importing from Juno. Only a few third party utilities were made that could do anything with the proprietary message storage format. Users must use third party applications to convert and export the data, principally juno5bdb for messages (which Juno stores in a Berkeley DB), and Dawn for addresses.
In 2001, Juno enacted a new version of their privacy policy. By continuing to use the service, customers implicitly agreed to allow Juno to harvest any unused CPU cycles.[6] The plan was to assemble a Quasi Supercomputer using customers' processors, and then sell out time on the supercomputer to private companies that may want to use it. This additional revenue was to keep the company afloat after the dot-com bubble.[7] Most customers did not notice the change of terms. It is unclear whether Juno followed through on this plan.
Juno also has an offshore development center at Hyderabad, India. The name of the center has been changed recently to United Online Software Development India Pvt. Ltd.