[1][2] Netcom was established in 1988 by Bob Rieger,[3] an information systems engineer for Lockheed and Bill Gitow of System V. The company started off in San Jose, California as a service to allow local students to access university networks off-campus.

They later expanded to serve other areas and replaced the Tandy PCs with equipment from Sun Microsystems.

Users would call him early in the morning to fix Internet access issues until he hired night staff.

In 1997, Internetcom do Brasil SA was founded as a joint project between Netcom On-line and Itanet, a Brazilian telephone company.

In February 1999, ICG sold off the Netcom's U.S. subscribers and other assets to MindSpring for $245 million in cash and stock.

This case became controversial among free speech advocates such as the EFF and Internet service providers since Netcom itself did not post the content nor have any involvement with it other than operating as a third-party hosting medium which did not actively monitor or censor their users' content.