AOL marries Time Warner

January 2000

The largest Internet service provider in the world, America Online, will take over Time Warner, the world's largest media company. It is reported to be the biggest merger in history. Some regard the take over as a sign of the new century: Internet companies acquiring traditional industry. However, as the Economist put it, the deal "may also mark the moment when the distinction between pure Internet companies and their bricks-and-mortar equivalents begin to blur as the former realise they should use their heady valuations to lock in solid assets and the latter accept, as Time Warner's Gerald Levin has done, that in some sense 'the value creation of the Internet is real." (The Economist, Jan 15 2000).

• CNET on the merger
• America Online
• Time: Happily ever after?
• The Economist: The net gets real

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