Despite AOL's success, it too was shrouded by a constant cloud of doubt. In Swisher's profile, she chronicles AOL's many ups and downs throughout the 1990s—a series of glitches, competition from other tech giants such as Microsoft and CompuServe, and corporate blunders. Yet AOL always managed to come out on top: "the cockroach of cyberspace, the digital Dracula, the Lazarus of the online world," Swisher wrote. In September 1998, AOL acquired CompuServe —the U.S.'s oldest online service, which created the first GIF and boasted 2.6 million users.