June 10th, 2009
Tweet This: IAC Might Be Interested in AOL (Says Barry Diller)
Well, maybe the founders of Twitter and the CEO of Yahoo aren’t interested in acquiring AOL.
But IAC chairman Barry Diller might be.
The Time Warner online service, which is openly for sale, still is a “tremendously valuable property,’’ Diller said at the outset of the Advertising 2.0 conference at IAC’s headquarters on 18th Street in Manhattan. “Not the AOL dialup stuff, of course, but it has done a wonderful job on the media side. It has built up a ton of really good growing sites.” Those sites, will have “real good value” going forward.
AOL’s content unit, known as MediaGlow, operates such sites as MovieFone, Engadget HD, Pawnation, ParentDish and BloggingStocks. Formed in January, the unit claims its average user spends nearly four hours a month on what is called the AOL Network.
“Depending on how much the hang is, we’d definitely be interested in it,’’ Diller said, referring to the cost of the acquisition.
Diller said he once had gotten close to taking a 25% stake in AOL, when Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen was a major shareholder. But the two could not agree on price. That was many years ago, roughly.
More recently, Diller watched CBS pay $1.8 billion to acquire CNet Networks, which operates CNet, BNET, ZDNet, TechRepublic and TV.com web sites.
Did he have any interest?
“Never, zero,’’ he told Fine. “I just didn’t like it.”
Tom Steinert-Threlkeld is editor-in-chief of Securities Industry News, as well as a long-time media, technology and business journalist. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
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