Yahoo! Wants To Restart Merger Talks With AOL

[jpeyton]

Text

This has epic fail written all over it. On the other hand, a failed joint-venture between Yahoo! and AOL would make a tasty acquisition for someone in a couple of years.

 

[dudeman007]

failol

The last thing Yahoo needs to do is partner with another crappy company. As if the AOL Time Warner mix wasn't bad enough.

 

[Ika]

What's become of AOL nowadays anyway?

 

[jpeyton]

Here's all you need to know about AOL (from Wiki):

In 2000, AOL purchased Time Warner for $164 billion. After the merger, the profitability of the ISP division (America Online) decreased. Meanwhile, the market valuation of similar independent internet companies drastically fell. As a result, the value of the America Online division dropped significantly. This forced a goodwill write-off, causing AOL Time Warner to report a loss of $99 billion in 2002 ? at the time, the largest loss ever reported by a company.

 

[spanky]

i thought it was the other way around... i thought TW bought AOL.

 

[jpeyton]

Originally posted by: spanky
i thought it was the other way around... i thought TW bought AOL.

Nope; AOL at its peak was one of the largest companies in the world. Now it's a shadow of its former self.

CNN Money Article On Merger

 

[spanky]

Originally posted by: jpeyton

Originally posted by: spanky
i thought it was the other way around... i thought TW bought AOL.

Nope; AOL at its peak was one of the largest companies in the world. Now it's a shadow of its former self.

CNN Money Article On Merger

dang... all these years, i had it all wrong

 

[brxndxn]

Originally posted by: jpeyton

Originally posted by: spanky
i thought it was the other way around... i thought TW bought AOL.

Nope; AOL at its peak was one of the largest companies in the world. Now it's a shadow of its former self.

CNN Money Article On Merger

It's because they should've been handing out free AOL flash drives.. and instead, they lowered their amount of free coasters.. So people stopped hearing about them.

/sarcasm

AOL was okay.. I liked Prodigy, though.. I miss AOL/Compuserve/Prodigy.. It was like a mini-Internet for the Internet..

AOL.. they made it really easy to be a pirate.

 

[ponyo]

No one believes Yahoo will get together with AOL. Talk about being out of options. LOL. Yahoo basically wants a higher offer from Microsoft and by the looks of the premarket trading so far, the market thinks Microsoft will up the offer as Yahoo is trading slightly higher.

 

[GTaudiophile]

Why/how does AOL even exist anymore?

I always hated AOL. It's like they tried to put wrapping paper over the real internet (with sh!t software) and tried their best to force their customers to see the internet as they wanted to see it and made it hard for their customers to really access all the aspects of the internet in true freedom.

At least that is how I felt when my family tried it for a few months back in the late 90s.

 

[ponyo]

Originally posted by: GTaudiophile
Why/how does AOL even exist anymore?

I always hated AOL. It's like they tried to put wrapping paper over the real internet (with sh!t software) and tried their best to force their customers to see the internet as they wanted to see it and made it hard for their customers to really access all the aspects of the internet in true freedom.

At least that is how I felt when my family tried it for a few months back in the late 90s.

AOL served the need back in the days. Back when connecting to the internet was too complicated for most people and unlimited internet was unheard of. AOL introduced easy to connect option while making it simple for even the most unsavvy computer user. Unlimited internet revolutionized the ISP industry as prior to that everyone was charging by the hour or bytes used. Before broadband and in the era of dialup, AOL was king. So was their stock. I remember some crazy rides on AOL stock.

Yahoo stock was the best though. Classic earnings run every quarter like clockworks. Massive predictable earnings run and followed by large selloff after the earnings. You could make your year just by buying Yahoo shares couple weeks before earnings and selling a day or two before earnings and going short. Yahoo was what Google is today back in the days, with higher beta which made it terrific trading stock. Yahoo's rise on the day of the S&P500 add is still legendary and nothing has come close. Man, the good old days of internet mania.

 

[Aimster]

AOL still has 10 million paying subscribers .... why I don't know

 

[LuckyTaxi]

Originally posted by: Aimster
AOL still has 10 million paying subscribers .... why I don't know

those who dont want to lose @aol.com

i know of many folks who use cable modem and still pay for aol services.