Google has sold its shares of America Online back to Time Warner. The search company bought five percent of AOL back in 2005 for a billion dollars. Google is getting back only $283 million. That's a $700 million loss, folks. Ouch.
Lest you feel too badly for Google, keep in mind: The search giant likely bought up part of AOL to expand its reach, and that seems to have worked out pretty well for the company over the last four or five years. I just assume that Google knows what it's doing...Of course, it could be that Google made a dumb decision a few years ago by dropping a billion dollars on a company that was obviously not going to fare well in the future.
Speaking of the future: Time Warner is spinning AOL into a separate company, and America Online plans to continue running its web brands and services, as well as its advertising business and its internet subscription services. Believe it or not, AOL still offers internet subscriptions!
Either way, who remembers those CDs AOL used to send to every single person on the entire planet? I do. I think I still have a couple dozen of them in my house. Someday, they'll be collector's items, when people are nostalgic for the internet failures of the past!
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yellowdart46
They were not failures. They brought the ease of having pretty much everything to you for a price. Your email, news, buddy lists, IM, etc. Millions of people bought their service and the internet boomed. So a failure company, I think not. The only thing they failed to do was evolve with the times.
Zand3r
ahh yes i couldn't live with out my coasters. They were fun for throwing too. Takes me back to when i was a nerd ninja =)
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