Time Warner to spin off AOL
Media giant Time Warner announced Thursday morning that it will cast off its AOL division to become a standalone company. Before that separation can take place, Time Warner will buy the 5 percent of AOL owned by Google so that it will have 100 percent control of AOL. Time Warner expects the transaction with Google to take place in the third quarter and the final AOL spinoff around the end of the year.
The separation of AOL from Time Warner will put a final nail in the coffin of one of the emblematic mergers of the dot-com boom and bust. Brimming with the abundant funds and hyper-optimism of the Web’s go-go years, AOL–then known as America Online–acquired Time Warner in January 2001 to create the world’s largest media company. Within a year, however, it was already apparent that the union of new and old media was not as “supercharged” as its backers had promised.
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