In an SEC filing, Google confirms what we already knew: AOL is not worth $20 billion. It may be worth half that, or at least that's what various reports claim Time Warner was recently shopping the
beleaguered Web giant around for. In the filing, Google says, "Based on our review, we believe our investment in AOL may be impaired."
Indeed, Google bought a 5% stake in the Time Warner
company at a valuation of $20 billion in 2005. Optimistically, Google states in its filing that it does not believe the impairment "is other-than-temporary," but still, due to the depreciating value
of AOL, the search giant has lost money here.
At the time, Google bought a $1 billion stake in AOL as a defensive move to keep Microsoft from powering AOL search.
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