Every single time I look up the value of the AOL Time Warner merger it shocks me. And I’ve covered this industry for nearly 20 years. $350 billion. The biggest merger in history, at the time. Steve Case– the man who was the architect of it, who stepped aside from his CEO job in order to make the deal happen– is not surprisingly a man who got used to be considered crazy.

It took AOL seven years of evangelism and partnerships to get to some 200,000 customers and an IPO of some $70 million. When the company started, it was illegal for commercial entities to be hooked up to the Internet, only 3% of the country was online, and Sears was one of the most innovative Internet pioneers. Sears!

The story of the early days of AOL as told to us by Steve...