Friday, December 16, 2005

Google to buy 5% stake in AOL

Hmm this is a strange deal for AOL to make.

"Why would Time Warner shareholders be happy sharing some of AOL ownership?" asked Blake Warner, an investment banker at Thomas Weisel Partners. "What does AOL suffer from? It suffers from a declining dial-up subscriber base. Time Warner is still stuck with that."

Unless Google comes up with a solution that fixes the migration of AOL subscribers to the broadband offerings of other access providers, it's unclear what Time Warner shareholders stand to gain, he said.

Perhaps this could be a good faith thing so Google can get in the door before MSFT. So it is like a $1 billion dollar payment with an option to buy the company in the future. I think things could be really heating up for Time Warner before too long.

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