Verizon agrees to buy AOL for $4.4 billion

(Image credit: Neilson Barnard/Getty Images/Verizon)

last updated 12 May 2015

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.

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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.