AOL Repurchases Google Stake

[Brett_Tabke]

[online.wsj.com...]

Time Warner Inc. earlier this month bought back the 5% stake Google Inc. owned in AOL for $283 million, according to a document filed on Monday with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The document, filed by AOL in preparation for its spinoff from Time Warner, also cites compensation details for Tim Armstrong. Mr. Armstrong is the Google ad sales executive Time Warner recently recruited as chief executive of AOL.

[edited by: tedster at 7:18 am (utc) on July 28, 2009]
[edit reason] fix the quote box [/edit]

[webastronaut]

I wonder why? Bing, I think I got it Yahoo!

[powerstar]

Dec 20, 2005 ... Google will invest $1 billion for an effective 5% equity stake in America Online, Inc.

Time Warner Inc. earlier this month bought back the 5% stake Google Inc. owned in AOL for $283 million

Ouch!

[JAB Creations]

I'm not an economist but $283 million seems insanely high for a company that now has fewer subscribers then World of Warcraft! I wonder what the percentage shares of their ISP and advertising revenue look like?

- John

[IanKelley]

So that would value AOL at 5.66 billion? *chuckle*

[ogletree]

AOL made a $3/4 bil profit. My question is how does AOL have $283 million. The only way they can have that is if they know somebody like MS is going to pay them that much or more for the rights to what Google gave up.

[robzilla]

For those without a WSJ subscription:
[marketwatch.com...]

[goodroi]

If you only look at subscriber revenue then it doesnt make sense (ps they still do have millions of subscribers). AOL still has about 3% search market share plus a chunk of email market share. That is very valuable.