Science & Tech Quote by Steve Case

Nostalgia is doing a lot of work here, and Steve Case knows it. By calling AOL “once the leading Internet company in the world,” he’s not just stating a fact from the dial-up era; he’s staking a claim to legitimacy in a tech culture that worships the new and quietly mocks yesterday’s giants. The phrase “special pride and passion” reads like a founder’s love letter, but it also functions as a credential: I built this, I understand this, and I’m still the right person to speak for it.

The intent is twofold. Publicly, it’s reassurance to investors, employees, and longtime users that AOL isn’t a punchline, it’s an asset with unrealized upside. Privately, it’s reputational triage. Case’s legacy is forever entangled with the Time Warner merger, a corporate collision that became shorthand for dot-com hubris. “Return to its past greatness” is a subtle revision of that narrative, reframing AOL not as the company that overreached, but the company that led first and can lead again.

The subtext is a familiar Silicon Valley move before Silicon Valley had the language for it: brand resurrection. “Past greatness” evokes not just market dominance, but cultural centrality, when getting online often meant getting AOL. Case is selling the idea that attention, distribution, and trust can be reassembled even after the platform has changed. It’s optimism with an edge of defiance, aimed at a world that has already written the obituary.