AOL (US)

When the original dotcom boom was at its peak, AOL became the first online company to cross completely into the offline world, using its sky-high stock price to buy Time Warner, the world's biggest media company. But was it a deal worth doing? America Online quickly became the scapegoat for the merged group's subsequent financial woes, which culminated in a record $100bn loss for 2002. The criticism was not entirely justified. While AOL certainly has its difficulties, the catastrophic write-offs were largely the after-effects of dotcom fever which allowed a virtual start-up to be considered more valuable than a media giant four times its size. However, AOL's revenues have shrunk dramatically in recent years as it transformed itself from a subscription business into an advertising-funded portal, selling off its online access divisions across Europe. As a result it came as no surprise in 2009 when Time Warner finally confirmed that it would spin off the remaining AOL business to shareholders before the end of the year.

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AOL website

Bebo	Netscape
CompuServe	ICQ
Tacoda	MapQuest
Advertising.com	AOL Moviefone
Adtech	Third Screen Media

Time Warner

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