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Time Warner to spin off AOL by end of 2009 - It's Official

news.cnet.com — 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. The final spinoff should occur around the end of the year.

Who dugg this? Made popular May 28, 2009

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  • Wreckage, on 05/28/2009, -1/+95Reporters tried to contact AOL, but kept getting a busy signal.
  • LemonDefragger, on 05/28/2009, -1/+44what about my 500 free hours*!
  • trdrstv, on 05/28/2009, -3/+46I love how AOL bought Time Warner and now Time Warner is casting THEM off....
    I guess we know who won the Management Fight Club.
  • SigFemSeks, on 05/28/2009, -1/+31You've got fail.
  • papashawn, on 05/28/2009, -0/+26To all the people going "what does anyone use AOL for?"

    if you go on engadget, walletpop, fanhouse, TMZ, or a host of other sites you are using AOL. They did the smart thing by acknowledging the AOL brand was losing equity, and becoming more of a holdings company.
  • BlindingDawn, on 05/28/2009, -1/+20Be gone into the sea with you.
  • bigteebo, on 05/28/2009, -0/+15I can't even remember the last time I got a free AOL CD.
  • mshensley, on 05/28/2009, -0/+14AOL is still in business?
  • inactive, on 05/28/2009, -1/+15The colossal failure of AOL after the merger still amuses me. Was Time Warner the only people on the planet that didn't realize there was a huge backlash against AOL just waiting to happen when the deal came up?
  • inactive, on 05/28/2009, -0/+14I miss getting free AOL floppy disks in the mail. Granted, now I don't even have a computer with a floppy drive, but darn it, those things were handy.
  • rossisdead, on 05/28/2009, -0/+12They still mail those?
  • sh0x, on 05/28/2009, -6/+16Holy crap! AOL still EXISTS?
  • theboyqueen, on 05/28/2009, -1/+11They didn't; AOL bought them! Seems completely ridiculous in retrospect, doesn't it?
  • robEstyles, on 05/28/2009, -0/+9You beat me to it. For years AOL has turned more into a media company than a ***** dial-up internet portal. They do still suck however.
  • jmkiii, on 05/28/2009, -0/+9You win
  • browny1978, on 05/28/2009, -1/+9its lost 90% of its value in almost 9 years, it all started to go wrong for AOL when Freeserve and co, started offering unlimited access for 1p/min dialup, and IE, and Netscape got better (before being bought by AOL) AOL was from the old school. i cant see them ever threatening to be as big as they were.
  • tgc1, on 05/28/2009, -0/+8It'd be cool if they sent out usb flash drives these days. I still have several dozen AOL floppies, I threw the CD's in the garbage. They were only useful as table coasters. Floppies you could format.
  • dsherman73, on 05/28/2009, -1/+8Time warner could have done alot with AOL. Like streaming content to the internet, or adding AOL to it's cable boxes so you could get online on your TV. oh well.. I don't think AOL will recover from this one...
  • Homerr, on 05/28/2009, -0/+7Why did Google buy 5% of AOL at one point?
  • rwbrinso, on 05/28/2009, -2/+9Two evils do not make an awesome.
  • arplayer2k, on 05/28/2009, -0/+6TMZ is what is wrong with America. And of course MTV.
  • CLShortFuse, on 05/28/2009, -1/+7Now AOL should spin-off Nullsoft (Winamp) and then die in a fire.
  • mario323, on 05/28/2009, -0/+5As long as old people exist who don't know the difference between dial-up and high speed, AOL will exist.
  • TheMachine1, on 05/28/2009, -0/+5Yeah thats even dumber.
  • joerod, on 05/28/2009, -1/+5aside from aol mail and aim what do people use aol for? surly not for their ISP.
  • ryan850, on 05/28/2009, -0/+4What does AOL even do these days? other than the ***** instant messenger?
  • phogasmic, on 05/28/2009, -0/+4I don't really like AOL, except for AIM and that only because they built it into iChat. Other then that I'm not sure what AOL is good for.
  • foucaultsvac, on 05/28/2009, -0/+3I work for AOL, as a freelance writer.

    It does plenty more than being an ISP.

    And no, I don't work in the ISP division.
  • shininia, on 05/28/2009, -0/+3It was part of their global domination plan. It was just a bad choice.
  • BlanKz, on 05/28/2009, -1/+4Don't talk about Management Fight Club.
  • staticfire, on 05/29/2009, -0/+3The AOL CD's made excellent frisbees as well.
  • diggduggDOOM, on 05/28/2009, -6/+8Does this mean an end to the free drink coasters showing up in my mailbox?
  • tgc1, on 05/28/2009, -0/+2How is that company still in business?
  • angrykeyboarder, on 05/29/2009, -0/+1Where have you been? AOL long ago reinvented itself as a (pretty decent) web portal (a la MSN, Yahoo!...). http://www.aol.com
  • angrykeyboarder, on 05/29/2009, -0/+1AOL long ago reinvented itself as a web portal (a la MSN, Yahoo!...).
  • solid12345, on 05/29/2009, -0/+1Why does the Predator take human skulls with him?
  • angrykeyboarder, on 05/29/2009, -0/+1Where have you been? AOL long ago reinvented itself as a web portal (a la MSN, Yahoo!...).
    http://www.aol.com
  • dagamer34, on 05/29/2009, -0/+1In otherwords, Time Warner made a mistake on par with Yahoo! buying broadcast.com.
  • angrykeyboarder, on 05/29/2009, -0/+1Very much so. Where have you been? AOL long ago reinvented itself as a web portal (a la MSN, Yahoo!...). http://www.aol.com
  • angrykeyboarder, on 05/29/2009, -0/+1The same thing MSN and Yahoo! are good for. An all-purpose web portal. (www.aol.com).
  • angrykeyboarder, on 05/29/2009, -0/+1Why do they still suck? AOL.com is a pretty good portal (no worse than MSN or Yahoo!).
  • ryan850, on 05/29/2009, -0/+1I think my statement stands for itself. but maybe i should add, "... that really ***** matters to anyone."

    Just about every single person i know only goes to the aol page because they don't uncheck the box to set it as their homepage when installing AIM, and they have no clue how to change it back... they have been irrelevant for years.
  • LibertyPrime, on 05/28/2009, -0/+1If Cthulhu was running this operation, then it would be awesome.
  • inactive, on 05/28/2009, -1/+2Cancel.
    The.
    *****.
    Account.
  • solid12345, on 05/29/2009, -0/+1Don't you love dead-end companies. TV Guide has a major branch based out of my city and it is a shadow of what it once was, full of idiot executives who failed to realize the changing market conditions and are still clueless.
  • sdphost, on 05/28/2009, -0/+1Welcome, You've Got Mail from Time Warner.
  • andrewh7, on 05/28/2009, -0/+1Hopefully, it gets spun off into the toilet
  • Swampthing, on 05/29/2009, -0/+1In other breaking news, AOL has returned to it's former name QuantumLink and will once again only be available for the Commodore 64 series of computers. Experts believe this effort will cut down on subscriber costs and allow the company bring their subzero profits back to zero.
  • shaunj66, on 05/28/2009, -0/+1And you clicked on this story because...?
  • sanskrtam, on 05/29/2009, -0/+1AOL should be disintegrated. It doesn't look like AOL will have its old glory back.
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