Verizon agrees to buy AOL for $4.4 billion

Peter Weber, The Week US's avatar
By
Last updated
Verizon is buying AOL for $4.4 billion
(Image credit: Neilson Barnard/Getty Images/Verizon)

On Monday, Verizon Communications announced that it is buying AOL Inc. for $50 a share, or $4.4 billion, a 23 percent premium over AOL's recent average share price. Tim Armstrong, AOL chairman and chief executive, will keep his job after the deal is finalized this summer, Verizon said. Armstrong and Verizon both said in statements that the goal of the merger is to add AOL's ad and mobile video-streaming technology to Verizon's extensive wireless network.

This isn't AOL's first big merger: In 2000, AOL nominally purchased Time Warner in a $164 billion deal that soured with the dot-com bust of 2001 and finally ended in 2009. The Verizon merger needs regulatory approval.

The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516.jpg

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

Join more than 350,000 subscribers and keep yourself informed with a selection of The Week’s most interesting, enlightening and entertaining stories - plus daily puzzles.

Join more than 350,000 subscribers and keep yourself informed with a selection of The Week’s most interesting, enlightening and entertaining stories - plus daily puzzles.

Sign up
Peter Weber, The Week US
Peter Weber, The Week US

Peter has worked as a news and culture writer and editor at The Week since the site's launch in 2008. He covers politics, world affairs, religion and cultural currents. His journalism career began as a copy editor at a financial newswire and has included editorial positions at The New York Times Magazine, Facts on File, and Oregon State University.