AOL

AOL is a global advertising-supported Web company, with display advertising network in the U.S., a substantial worldwide audience, and a suite of popular Web brands and products.

The company’s strategy focuses on increasing the scale and sophistication of its advertising platform and growing the size and engagement of its global online audience through leading products and programming.

On March 13, 2008, AOL Internet division announced their plans to buy social network Bebo for $850 million in cash.

History of Aol:

AOL was founded in the early 1980’s as Control Video Corp, with an online service, Gameline, for the Atari 2600 console. In 1985 the company was re- named Quantum Computer Services and was the first online service launched for the Commodore 64 and 128 consoles. In 1988, the company created an Online service for the PC and changed its name to AOL (America Online), becoming over the next decade the premier Online access subscription business, at one point having almost 25MM subscribers.

AOL originally went public in 1992 and grew to become the largest Online access and portal company on the Web. In 2000, AOL acquired Time Warner for $160B+ in what was then considered to be the largest M&A transaction, and the company was re-named AOL Time Warner. Since then, AOL’s access business has deteriorated as more subscribers churned away from its core dial- up service for higher broadband ‘Net services. As we show in the chart below, AOL’s narrowband subscriber penetration of total Internet appears to be asymptotically heading to zero, as more and more people convert to broadband.