Verizon Buys AOL For $4.4 Billion

Via CNN Money:

Verizon is buying AOL for about $4.4 billion, or $50 a share, the companies announced Tuesday. The deal aims to create a major new player in the digital media business by combining one of the biggest mobile network providers with a leading content producer. It's part of Verizon's plan to dominate a future in which all content -- from TV channels to publications -- are streamed over the Internet. It also fits into the company's plan to connect everything from smartphones to TVs and refrigerators in the "Internet of Things." AOL, which is perhaps best known for its 90s era dial-up service, has transformed over the past few years into an Internet media giant. It's online properties include The Huffington Post, TechCrunch, Engadget, Makers and AOL.com. AOL boasts a significant advertising business, with an estimated $600 million in revenue. That's also part of the appeal for Verizon as it plans to launch its own digital and video platform later this year.

AOL will keep its name and operate as a separate division.

Cyber Monday: AOL Urges Change Of Passwords, Feds Say Don't Use Explorer

AOL was hacked today.

AOL Inc on Monday urged its tens of millions of email account holders to change their passwords and security questions after a cyber attack compromised about 2 percent of its accounts. The company said it was working with federal authorities to investigate the attack, in which hackers obtained email addresses, postal addresses, encrypted passwords and answers to security questions used to reset passwords. It said there was no indication that the encryption on that data had been broken. A company spokesman declined to say how many email accounts are registered on its system.

From AOL's blog:

AOL's investigation began immediately following a significant increase in the amount of spam appearing as "spoofed emails" from AOL Mail addresses. Spoofing is a tactic used by spammers to make it appear that the message is from an email user known to the recipient in order to trick the recipient into opening it. These emails do not originate from the sender's email or email service provider - the addresses are just edited to make them appear that way. AOL's investigation is still underway, however, we have determined that there was unauthorized access to information regarding a significant number of user accounts. This information included AOL users' email addresses, postal addresses, address book contact information, encrypted passwords and encrypted answers to security questions that we ask when a user resets his or her password, as well as certain employee information.

RELATED: The federal government today urged Americans to suspend usage of Internet Explorer.

The U.S. and UK governments on Monday advised computer users to consider using alternatives to Microsoft Corp's Internet Explorer browser until the company fixes a security flaw that hackers used to launch attacks. The Internet Explorer bug, disclosed over the weekend, is the first high-profile computer threat to emerge since Microsoft stopped providing security updates for Windows XP earlier this month. That means PCs running the 13-year-old operating system will remain unprotected, even after Microsoft releases updates to defend against it.The Department of Homeland Security's U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team said in an advisory released on Monday that the vulnerability in versions 6 to 11 of Internet Explorer could lead to "the complete compromise" of an affected system.

Open Thread Thursday

AOL chat room flashback! A/S/L?

Dan Savage: Get Over Your Prejudice

From AOL's "You've Got" series.

Google's Biggest Acquistions

Google has gobbled up more than 100 companies since its founding, but almost half of those acquisitions have taken place in the last year or so.

Open Thread Thursday

A/S/L?

AOL Buys Huffington Post For $315M

Whoa.

AOL, the online media company that has recently snatched several smaller content firms, has agreed to purchase news blog service The Huffington Post for $315 million, the two companies announced Monday. The companies said Arianna Huffington, The Huffington Post's co-founder and editor-in-chief, will be named president and editor-in-chief of The Huffington Post Media Group, which will include all Huffington Post and AOL content.

AOL gets 110M unique visitors per month, Huffington Post gets 26M.

I Just Got Fired By AOL News

In their "11 Famous Politically Correct Firings" story, AOL News names me as the person canned from Sen. Saxby Chambliss' staff for writing anti-gay hate speech on some homo blog. Oh well, there are worse things about me on the internet.

UPDATED: AOL News has updated the story with a correction (misspelling my name, which they got right when I writing hate speech).

(Tipped by JMG reader TryGuy)

Open Thread Thursday

We've gotten lots of new people up in here lately. Introduce yourselves, AOL chat room style. A/S/L?

Your Unique Value

It looks like you're worth about $18/month to Google. Or is per year? Confusing. I'm also not sure where the Twitter revenue even comes from.

(Via - Business Insider)

Time Warner Dumping AOL

Almost a decade after the most famously failed merger in history, Time Warner is finally casting off AOL.

The divorce, announced Thursday, will spin out AOL as a separate Internet company run by former Google Inc. advertising executive Tim Armstrong. He was hired in March to try to restore the luster to a brand once known as America Online. Time Warner owns 95 percent of AOL and will buy out Google Inc.'s 5 percent stake during the third quarter. From there, AOL will be spun off into a separate publicly traded company around the end of the year.

AOL bought Time Warner for $147B in 2001. Within two years the value of the merged company had plunged $100B.

HomoQuotable - Richard Rothstein

"AOL made a tremendous noise about its commitment to the GLBT community and to its queer readers in particular. AOL trades on the important and valuable role it plays in the various communities it serves through its many pages and themes. Partly, I walked away from my original blog, Proceed At Your Own Risk because AOL convinced me that I would be able to share my voice with a huge audience, gay and straight.

But after six months of pouring our hearts and souls into this venture and creating an important and influential--even leadership--role in the queer community--AOL looked at 3.5 million page monthly views, 500,000 monthly unique site visits and the commensurate ad revenues, good will for the AOL brand throughout the blogosphere, the print media and the electronic media and within hours shut it all down." - Former AOL Queersighted blogger Richard Rothstein, on AOL's decision to end its in-house gay blog. Queersighted managing editor Kenneth Hill (AKA the Gayest Editor Ever) was among 2000 AOL employees laid off last month.

Rothstein continues: "And, at the end of the day, I suppose we can't accuse AOL of homophobia or politics. After all, Mary Cheney remains a vice president at AOL and she, as we all know, is a staunch supporter of the queer community, our rights and our voice. And just because a number of AOL's openly homophobic and conservative right wing bloggers remain employed and blogging doesn't mean that the termination of large numbers of senior gay employees means anything. "
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Queer Sighted

Kenneth Hill, AOL's "gayest editor ever", has merged his AOL.com/gay blog into a new AOL community blog called Queer Sighted. New writers joining Queer Sighted include the fab Richard Rothstein, formerly of Proceed At Your Own Risk, whom you can congratulate this Saturday when Richard joins our blarg hop. Go Queer Sighted! Now y'all go update your blogrolls.
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