AOL, the gateway to the 'old' Internet, stunned the social media world it completely missed out on by announcing plans to be acquired by Verizon for $4.4 billion.
The deal amount is at once staggeringly small for AOL -- a company that once had a market cap of $222 billion at its peak in 1999 -- and also staggeringly large for a business that many consider a relic of another era.
[seealso slug=http://sale-online.click/2014/04/15/aim-history/%5D%3C/p%3E%3Cp%3EThe Internet company enjoyed a meteoric rise in the 1990s, but struggled in the 2000s thanks to a disastrous merger with Time Warner, a decline in demand for the dial-up service that at one point made up the bulk of its revenue and new competition from upstarts like Google and Facebook. AOL pushed to re-position itself as more of a content and advertising business, with the help of a few large acquisitions. It succeeded -- or at least it succeeded enough for Verizon to commit billions for what is essentially being billed as a deal for advertising technology.
For those who haven't followed AOL closely in recent years and still associate it primarily with the infamous CDs, here's a quick primer to catch you up: