Universo Online

Universo Online (Portuguese, 'Universe Online') (known by the acronym UOL) is a Brazilian web content, products and services company. It belongs to Grupo Folha enterprise.

UOL is the world's largest Portuguese speaking portal, featuring more than 1,000 news sources and 7 million pages. The portal provides website hosting, data storage, publicity dealing, online payments and security systems. It also holds more than 300,000 online shops, 23 million buyers, and 4 million vendors in its portals.

In 2012, UOL was the fifth most visited website in Brazil. According to Ibope Nielsen Online, UOL is Brazil's largest internet portal with more than 50 million unique visitors and 6.7 billion page views every month.

UOL was established by Grupo Folha on April 28, 1996. After seven months, UOL joined portal Brasil Online (BOL) from Editora Abril. However Editora Abril does not own shares in BOL anymore. Portugal Telecom had 29% of UOL, but sold its shares to Folhapar, a company controlled by businessman João Alves de Queiroz Filho of Hypermarcas holding in 2010. Grupo Folha and Folhapar are UOL's main shareholders. UOL won more than 100 awards as one of Brazil's largest online portal since 1996.

On April 28, 1996, UOL went online. In July 1996 it put online an operation with a 2 megabit per second base connection. In August, UOL launched a web provider in the cities of Greater São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro coupled with e-mail accounts and the setup of browser Netscape version 2.2 in Portuguese.

In 1997, UOL created a series of forums, focus groups and surveys, as well as the online version of ”Nova Enciclopédia Ilustrada Folha’’ encyclopedia. UOL also launched TV UOL (their Video Sharing Platform), with content based on music videos, interviews and movie trailers, and AcessoNet, a company that provides larger Internet access in Brazil's major cities. UOL also expanded its connection capability to 20 megabits and received the award of best web provider and Internet users favorite's website of Informática Exame magazine in 1997.

UOL absorbed the subscribers of Internet provider Compuserve in Brazil in a move that increased its connection capability to 74 megabits. UOL launched UOL Discador, a feature that eliminated lack of Internet access in case the network get busy in 1998.

In the following year UOL reached more than 350,000 subscribers and released UOL Educação portal (UOL Education) and also Placar UOL Esporte, which presents scores of soccer, tennis, volley, basketball, and F1 events all over Brazil and the world. In the same period UOL launched an unlimited web access platform, a Bible online version and started to offer free e-mail hosting via Brasil Online (BOL), a new firm of UOL group. The company also expanded its online operations with portals in Argentina, Mexico, Venezuela, Chile and United States of America.