Bending Spoons is buying AOL for some reason

AOL volition soon person a caller owner. Bending Spoons, the Italian bundle institution that has bought up a scope of different integer businesses like Evernote, MeetUp, WeTransfer, and soon Vimeo, announced plans to acquisition AOL from Yahoo aft securing a $2.8 cardinal indebtedness financing package.

Over the past mates of decades, AOL has been passed from institution to company, merging with Time Warner successful 2001 earlier getting spun disconnected and sold to Verizon successful 2015 for $4.4 billion. Verizon merged AOL and Yahoo into a caller company, called Oath, which it offloaded to backstage equity steadfast Apollo Global Management for astir $5 cardinal successful 2021. AOL was placed nether the Yahoo umbrella pursuing the acquisition.

AOL inactive offers a web portal and email service, though it recently unopen down dial-up internet work aft much than 3 decades.

Bending Spoons has made a flurry of acquisitions successful caller years, a fewer of which were followed by layoffs and, successful immoderate cases, higher prices for customers. The institution expects its acquisition of AOL to adjacent by the extremity of this year, with CEO Luca Ferrari saying that Bending Spoons volition “invest importantly to assistance the merchandise and concern flourish.”

Even though it’s hard not to deliberation astir which institution volition get AOL next, Ferrari says successful the property merchandise that Bending Spoons has “never sold an acquired business,” and volition service AOL’s “large, loyal lawsuit basal for galore years to come.”