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AOL and TimeWarner finally move into separate bedrooms

It was a marriage of inconvenience from the first, but they did it anyway. A shotgun wedding to legitimise the new baby of investment – dotcom stocks. Alas, the glitzy AOL-TimeWarner union is now estranged, after Mr TimeWarner spun off his fickle Internet wifey for devouring his credit card. No one knows how much value is left in the online operation, which is just as well, because new boss Tim Armstrong has to squeeze it out drop by drop. The once-combined market value of the old and new media worlds was about $350 billion, but the ravages of the recession have left today’s cupboard bare at just $50 billion - twice the decline of the Nasdaq index’s 45%. AOL now has 5 million subscribers, compared with the 26 million of 2002. Boy, that’s a long fall from grace. The anorexic cover girl of yesteryear quickly needs to put on weight. Read more: The New York Times

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