AOL To Be Sold To Bending Spoons For Roughly $1.5 Billion (axios.com) 49
Hedge fund Apollo has reached a deal to sell AOL to Italian tech holding group Bending Spoons in a deal valued at roughly $1.5 billion, Axios reported Wednesday From the report: AOL still drives hundreds of millions of dollars of free cash flow. Bending Spoons CEO Luca Ferrari said AOL has around 30 million monthly active users across its email and web content properties. That "incredibly loyal user base," as he called it, could be better served with greater investments in AOL's product and user experience, he noted.
[...] Bending Spoons is a privately held Italian holding company that acquires assets with large user bases and invests in their turnaround with technology improvements. The company tends to sit on their investments long term after acquiring them. Some of the other companies Bending Spoons has acquired include Vimeo, Evernote, WeTransfer, Brightcove.
[...] Bending Spoons is a privately held Italian holding company that acquires assets with large user bases and invests in their turnaround with technology improvements. The company tends to sit on their investments long term after acquiring them. Some of the other companies Bending Spoons has acquired include Vimeo, Evernote, WeTransfer, Brightcove.
In other news (Score:4, Insightful)
AOL is over valued by $1.5B
Re: In other news (Score:4, Funny)
Only Boomers use it.
Not me, I'm much more modern. I have a Hotmail email address.
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Let's not forget all those Juno email accounts still floating around out there.
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You can mail me at charlotte@enron.com
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I'll let you know in 3 days if this got to my fido account! I've recently upgraded to 28.8 so I should see any attachment in 4 days.
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28.8! You lucky dog.
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This USRobotics is really worth it. I wonder if I'll be able to upgrade the daughterboard.
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You can also mail me at 2:292/807. Hope dad doesn't hog the line again :(.
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Same. I still use it, but only for MS stuff.
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You say that like it's a bad thing.
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You say that like it's a bad thing.
Hopefully that means its a refuge from "6 7"
Giant supply of tea cozies! (Score:2)
The REAL business plan is to add fur and convert all of the leftover AOL installation CDs to tea cozies.
Or not. I'm not actually sure what a tea cozy is. I'm guessing some kind of furry thing that goes around a teacup and keeps the tea warm and cozy, so they'd merely need to reshape the CDs and add fur.
Yeah, I could websearch to find out what a true tea cozy is, but such a dose of reality would kill the attempted funny. It's already on the verge of joke death. I say the hunt for the holy grail should be the
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I think they should go back to their original pre-CD business plan:
1. Mail out a lifetime supply of free floppy disks to every household in the USA.
2. ???
3. Profit!
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AOL is over valued by $1.5B
You would think, but perhaps the perceived value is the email archives of some of AOL's celebrity customers over the years, such as Joe Biden.
Buying the name? (Score:3)
I mean, yes, have a bunch of long time users still paying - out of fear they'll lose their e-mail account if they don't. Unless they can market the name long term though, that revenue will dry up sooner than they may like.
Most likely the customer list (Score:5, Insightful)
This is a major crisis about to hit America in about 8 to 10 years. Basically despite all the talk about inheritance for rank and file Americans there isn't really going to be anything left over because if nothing else happens our private Health Care system is going to drain your grandpa dry.
But right this very moment there are tens of millions of people over the age of 50 that still have quite a bit of money you can get out of them through various scams and dodgy deals.
I could absolutely see somebody spending 1.5 billion on AOL with the intention of scamming all the old folks who are on it. And it really is Old folks it's not just a stereotype there have been consistent reports that aol's remaining user base leans towards the elderly pretty heavily.
So it's probably not the name it's the possibility of scamming hundreds of millions of dollars out of those folks before they check out.
The hard part is going to be that right now basically every scammer on the planet is going after those old folks. So there is a lot of competition to steal their money and their retirements. Heck you're still competing with the American healthcare system to rip them off. Specifically the private insurance companies like Medicare advantage insurers they are forced often to deal with
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I use Fios and still keep the verizon.net email address for non important things. Verizon contracted that out through AOL.
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Good for apollo, bad for AOL itself and employees (Score:3)
bendingspoons has not the best track record for acquired personnel retention and acquired company growth
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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Interesting thought actually. Given the cess pit the ad supported, social-* web has become; maybe a subscription supported bulletin board would appeal to people. They same way vinyl records seem to appeal to mean in a world Prime Music and Spotify...
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Maybe they can start putting USB sticks on magazines like they used to do with 3.5" floppies back in the day? That would... well... it might at least increase the demand for the brand name.
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Two decades to figure out how to pivot. Millions in free cash flow (which is what they are probably after) and a $1.5b note that they will surely leverage to write off the free cash flow. It might seems like a bad deal, it could be a bad deal but at the end of the day they most likely won't get left holding the bag. They appear to be doing this over and over with the companies they acquire. Someone is getting rich and others will be left holding the bag.
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What growth can AOL expect? In another two decades most of their current customers will be dead and no one is going to replace them.
AOL transitioned from mostly ISP with some media to mostly media.
Translation = (Score:3)
AOL - the scam that never ends (Score:3)
Used to be a long time ago the scam was the idiot suckers who paid AOL for shitty internet access.
The past few years the scam has morphed into whoever is DUMB enough to buy AOL.
Apollo apparently was stupid enough to waste 5 billion on AOL in 2021, and they're only getting 1.5 billion out of it. 3.5 billion loss in 4 years - slick investment there guys (LOL).
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My parents used AOL through 2016 because it was their only option for internet access in rural Montana, up until they died of old age, as I would imagine the remaining AOL users will do within the next couple years.
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AOL spent a gigantic amount of money in the early days to put modems across the country so that rural users didn't have to connect running up long distance charges. I'm sure there are places in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan where that's still the only local-call Internet access. (Of course if they changed to 800-numbers at some point in the last decade I may be talking through my hat.)
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I disagree. AOL was, for many people in many places, the best internet service that was available to them, at any price. And for those who had choices, it was a reasonably-priced option. Even in recent years, AOL has served (mostly older) people who don't know how to jump through technical hoops to get "better" internet service, and it worked for them.
AOL's problem was that it failed to keep up with the times, wishing for the days when they *were* the portal to the internet.
oh, the irony (Score:4, Insightful)
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Not really - John Bolton just got indicted for sending Top Secret NOFOR documents to his AOL address. The report says Iran hacked his computers but without further detail.
Betcha several other Boomers in this category still use it for similar scenarios.
Probably a good investment by foreign intel with a recurring dividend in Metamucil ads.
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Are the Italians in the new Axis of Evil? It changes so often it's hard to keep track.
Cue James Randi laughing from the grave. (Score:3)
Naming a company willing to buy AOL after Uri Geller's fraudulent trickery seems appropriate.
Re: Cue James Randi laughing from the grave. (Score:2)
I'm fairly sure it's a matrix reference.
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That scene in the matrix is a reference to Uri Geller.
this is missing the most important part! (Score:2)
Ok, so AOL is pulling another Amiga. Big deal.
What we all want to know is whether or not we'll soon be getting free coasters in the mail again!
AOL still exists? (Score:2)
WHY?
Whiskey Tango Foxtrot
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First out the door (Score:2)
AOL on blu-ray now at Best Buy