AOL for One, and One for AOL

With AOL on the verge of axing another 2,000 employees, perhaps it's time to recap the winners and losers in the legendary fiasco of a merger with Time Warner.

Okay, maybe there are only losers.

If, as is rumored, the company doles out pink slips to one-fifth of its remaining work force, that would reduce the AOL payroll to about 8,000. At the time of the merger in 2000, AOL said in Securities and Exchange Commission filings that it employed 15,000 people.

Net decline: About 47 percent.

How about subscribers, then? When it announced its supercolossal takeover of venerable Time Warner, AOL said it had 23.2 million paying members. That had slipped to 15.5 million at the end of 2006, the year it decided to quit the dues-paying model and make itself free.

Net decline: About 33 percent then, and climbing fast.

Lastly, the lowly shareholders. On that sunny January morning when the blessed event was made public, the imputed value of what are now Time Warner shares popped to $80 or so on the happy news. On Monday, they closed at $18.75.

Net decline: About 76 percent.

So, have particular pity for soon-to-be-former employees who were also unlucky enough to have been shareholders.

by Mark Stein