Google Believes $1B Investment In AOL Is Crumbling

The Mountain View search giant bought its 5% stake in AOL, in part to keep AOL from defecting to Microsoft.  AOL parent company Time-Warner has said it is selling off the AOL dial-up business and in the aftermath of of the Yahoo/Microsoft wranglings, AOL seems to be on everyone’s radar.  We’ll see if Google wants to throw good money after bad in a continuing pursuit of AOL. In the long run, it may cost Google less to buy and leverage the heavily trafficed but faltering AOL than defending against a Microsoft/AOL/Yahoo conglomerate.  Then again, Google can afford the AOL loss and growing relations and a possible buy-out of Yahoo by Google would all but freeze Microsoft out of the search business ( as Yang noted!).  Slice it anyway you want, there are FTC and Congressional hearings on the horizon.  More