Building a Faster AOL

America Online, the nation’s most popular online service, is based in Arlington, Va., but is quietly assembling a sizable research presence in Orange County.

The company already has about 110 employees in Newport Beach and plans to more than double the size of its Orange County staff after moving early next year into a new business park being constructed near the UC Irvine campus by the Irvine Co.

AOL stepped into Orange County earlier this year when it acquired Johnson-Grace Co., which developed a compression technology used by AOL to speed up transmission of digital computer information. AOL paid about $70 million for Johnson-Grace last February.

Johnson-Grace continues to pursue new ways to help AOL subscribers download more images and information in less time.

“Any picture you see on the AOL service has been compressed by us,” said Steve Johnson, one of the founders of the company who continues to manage it. “The technology we’ve invented allows you to take a digital picture and reduce it by a factor of 100.”

He added that the department is developing a similar technology that could be used to compress sound. Why is compression so important?

“It’s all a question of speed,” Johnson said. “Consumers’ boredom curve is pretty steep. If it takes 30 seconds for a picture to appear, that’s not very compelling.”

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Greg Miller covers high technology for The Times. He can be reached at (714) 966-7830 and at greg.miller@latimes.com.