It's official: Time Warner Inc. is dumping AOL, one of the most ill-conceived corporate combos in history, reports AP. Time Warner owns 95% of AOL and will buy out Google Inc.'s 5% stake during the
third quarter. Then AOL will be spun off into a separate publicly traded company around the end of the year, run by Tim Armstrong, a former Google ad executive. AOL bought TW in 2001 for $147 billion.
AOL's ad sales dropped 20% in first the quarter -- or $109 million -- which surpassed the 18% decline in the fourth quarter.
