AOL Buys The Huffington Post

The Huffington Post, which launched on May 9, 2005 with a meager $1 million investment, and grew into one of the most heavily visited news sites in the country, announced that it would be acquired by AOL for $315 million, $300 million of it in cash and the rest in stock. 

"Arianna Huffington, the cable talk show pundit, author and doyenne of the political left, will take control of all of AOL’s editorial content as president and editor in chief of a newly created Huffington Post Media Group. The arrangement will give her oversight not only of AOL’s national, local and financial news operations, but also of the company’s other media enterprises like MapQuest and Moviefonea' (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/07/business/media/07aol.html?_r=1&hp).

"The company that brought dial-up Internet to millions of people is dead. In its place is a massive media empire that refuses to be ignored.  

"With its blockbuster acquisition of The Huffington Post, AOL has catapulted itself back into relevancy. It has sent a clear signal to the rest of the world that it is a media company and it is in this game to win.  

"AOL has been on a content acquisition spree recently, not only acquiring the technology blog network TechCrunch, but also snagging up Thing Labs, Brizzly and most recently About.me in the past few months" (http://mashable.com/2011/02/07/aol-huffington-post/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed:+Mashable+(Mashable), accessed 02-07-2010).