At its peak in December 1999, AOL had a market capitalisation of 222 billion dollars. Since then, the influx of broadband internet and the burst of the dot-com bubble reduced the one- time internet behemoth to a shadow of its former self. AOL once dominated email, internet connectivity, online news, and chat.
AOL couldn’t maintain its superior position as subscription and advertising revenue dried up with the shift from dial-up modems to cable broadband. A disastrous merger with Time Warner in 2000 was unwound in 2009. Along the way, AOL tried but failed to buy Facebook, YouTube and a minority stake in Chinese Internet company Tencent, Eventually, AOL to sold to Verizon in 2015 for just $4.4 billion.
CNBC
