Dialing for Dollars

Verizon is buying AOL for $4.4 billion in a deal that mostly values the one-time Internet giant for its video streaming and ad technology. “The goal is to become an automated middle man between advertisers and publishers.”

+ At the peak of the first Internet boom, AOL had a market value that was about $200 billion more than it sold for today. Let that be a lesson to all you next-generation entrepreneurs. You can run a company into the ground for fifteen years and still make billions. Quartz with AOL by the numbers.

+ And 2.15 million people still pay AOL for dialup access. (Who am I to judge? I haven’t cancelled my membership to the Columbia Record Club.)