A little piece of Internet history has now been laid to rest, as CompuServe was shut down for good just before this Fourth of July weekend. After some 30 years of service, CompuServe's new owner has finally pulled the plug, leaving us to reminisce about the days when the Internet was young and we were still using modems whose speed was measured in baud.

Most of us remember CompuServe fondly as one of the main Internet services from the 80s and 90s, and associate it with some of our first dabblings in the online world. Along with Prodigy, CompuServe offered a data connection to people across the globe, a connection that few had previously had at home. It set an early example for companies like AOL and even Apple's eWorld that launched in the early-to-mid 90s.

AOL eventually became the new hotness and ended up acquiring CompuServe's online services in 1997, vowing to keep CompuServe online and operational as a separate service from AOL. That was then, though, and this is now. As AOL's online services became increasingly irrelevant in today's broadband world (as evidenced by Time Warner's recent decision to spin off AOL), CompuServe—eventually renamed CompuServe Classic—was kept around as a nostalgic throwback to the Internet days of yore.

It comes as no surprise, then, that AOL decided finally to close the doors on CompuServe this month. In fact, it's surprising that CompuServe managed to stay alive for this long. Did anyone still use it in 2009? (If you did, please tell us why in the comments!)

CompuServe users are still allowed to use their e-mail addresses on AOL's system for no charge, but the rest of the service and software is going the way of the dodo. As pointed out by Basex analyst David Goldes, the most current version of CompuServe's client software dates back to 1999 for Windows NT 4.0.2. Vintage stuff.

With that, we bid farewell to CompuServe and to all the memories we had of the once-great service. So long, CompuServe, and thanks for all the fish!