AOL, the firm which told you “you’ve got mail” and delivered more CDs to your door than Amazon, is being bought by Verizon.
The deal values AOL at $4.4bn (£2.8bn), a long way from the mammoth $222bn price tag the company attracted 16 years ago during a boom in the share prices of technology firms.
AOL started life as Quantum Computer Services, which first provided an online service for the Commodore 64 computer system in 1985.
The company built up its position as one of the largest internet providers, gobbling up browser company Netscape and competitor CompuServe.
Then came AOL’s purchase of Time Warner in a deal valued at more than $160bn in 2000. Nine years later, Time Warner reversed the acquisition and AOL began to reinvent itself as a media company with former Google advertising executive Tim Armstrong at the helm.
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