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Time Warner to Spin Off AOL?

Posted by timothy on from the concerted-effort dept.

image77 writes "The Washington Post is reporting that Time Warner is considering spinning AOL into a separate company via an IPO. You might recall that AOL bought Time Warner for over $100 Billion in 2001, and then went on to lose almost that much in 2002."

5 of 164 comments (clear)

  1. If the new company still... by TWX · · Score: 5, Funny

    ...stays under the control of Time Warner but ends up going off and doing it's own thing then they should name it "AWOL"...

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    Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
  2. Time Warner was getting sick of AOL by jZnat · · Score: 5, Funny

    Time Warner later mentioned that they were sick of their employees spending all day chatting on AIM and claiming they were "beta testing" the next release.

    --
    'Yes, firefox is indeed greater than women. Can women block pops up for you? No. Can Firefox show you naked women? Yes.'
  3. Technically.... by fm6 · · Score: 5, Informative
    AOL did indeed buy Time-Warner, but it was really a merger. At the time, nobody realized (that they'll admit) how inflated AOL stock was, so it seemed to make sense to structure the merger as acquisition. That allowed them to pay for the merger simply by giving AOL stock to Time-Warner shareholders and renaming AOL as "AOL-Time-Warner".

    "AOL bought Time-Warner", while technically correct, is pretty misleading, since Time-Warner management initially had an equal role in the combined company. And "equal" soon changed to "dominant" as it become more and the AOL part would never lived up to initial expectations, and shareholders granted more and more authority to the Time-Warner part.

  4. Re:Aol is dying by ThePromenader · · Score: 5, Insightful

    ... I agree. AOL has by far outlasted its beginnings, and this only because of the "first web generation" (cough) educated to its (double cough) teachings (flashing gif, banner banner. Please click where you normally shouldn't have to click to continue so that you can look at this nice ad first).

    In today's market world, when a company (holding) wants to rid itself of its less profitable ventures, it must first isolate it and make it independant from its "parent" inter-financial network. If someone is gaff enough to take the (dangling) bait, great, but if not, it becomes an investment apart, becomes less (investor) interesting, wilts and dies.

    We've seen this story countless times over the past few decades, with only the logo that changes.

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    No, no sig. Really.

    ThePromenader
  5. Re:Their ages?? by Shai-kun · · Score: 5, Funny

    I have a suspicion "Parsons, 57" and "Miller, 50" are actually their names.

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    ...or so I've been told.