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Description

Innovative Online Industries, or IOI (pronounced eye-oh-eye) was a global telecommunications conglomerate and the world's largest Internet service provider. A large portion of IOI's business centered around providing access to the OASIS and on selling goods and services inside it. For this reason, IOI had attempted several hostile takeovers of Gregarious Simulation Systems, all of which had failed. Now they are trying to seize control of GSS by exploiting a loophole in Halliday’s will. The IOI's headquarters is located at 101 IOI Plaza in Columbus OH.

History

Innovative Online Industries Inc. was a founded in 2018, by Eric MacLean, the current chairman of the company.

Recently, IOI had created a new department within the company that they called their "Oology Division." ("Oology" was originally defined as "the science of studying birds' eggs," but in light of Halliday's contest, it had taken on a second meaning: the "science" of searching for Halliday’s Easter egg.) IOI’s Oology Division had but one purpose: to win Halliday’s contest and seize control of his fortune, his company, and the OASIS itself.

Easter egg: 101 is likely a reference to Orwell's 1984. Room 101 is a hidden room within the Ministry of Love, where dissidents against Big Brother are mercilessly tortured into making false confessions.

You asked me once, what was in Room 101. I told you that you knew the answer already. Everyone knows it. The thing that is in Room 101 is the worst thing in the world.

-1984

The original Room 101 was itself a sardonic reference to Orwells time as a war correspondent working with the BBC. Room 101 was the conference room where he and his colleagues were often forced to sit through hours of boring meetings.

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