in 2000, when AOL announced that it is buying TimeWarner- personally – i couldnt figure out what was the reason. At 164B AOL might have wanted to bolster its content – from being a pure play ISP to compete with Microsoft’s MSN Online. However, AOL was providing a platform – which i could have used to get feeds from multiple wire services thus allowing for aggregation of news rather than a very expnsive news feed.
In December 9th 2009 – TimeWarner will spin off AOL. I believe this comes to a full circle. With the AOL issuing 11 shares for every TimeWarner share to now becoming a separate entity. Personally, i belive this is one of the best things to happen to AOL after the 2003 fiasco of declaring $99B in losses.
With the New AOL – we should see a stronger news feed, and tighter integration with shopping sites and entertainment sites – thus they should push for getting people to spend more time on AOL.com than any other site.