List of acquisitions by AOL

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AOL's Silicon Valley branch office

AOL is an internet company founded in 1985 as Quantum Computing Services. [1] Each acquisition is for the respective company in its entirety. The acquisition date listed is the date of the agreement between AOL and the subject of the acquisition. The value of each acquisition is listed in US dollars because AOL is headquartered in the United States. If the value of an acquisition is not listed, then it is undisclosed.

Contents

As of August 2013, AOL's largest acquisition has been the purchase of Netscape, a web browser company, for US$4.2 billion.

Netscape's browser was dominant, in terms of market share, but it had lost most of its share to Internet Explorer during the first browser war. By the end of 2007, the usage share of Netscape's browsers had fallen from over 90% in the 1990s, to less than 1%. [2] Its second-largest acquisition is the purchase of MapQuest, a web mapping company. From 1999 to 2009, MapQuest had the greatest market share among mapping websites; it has since dropped to second place, behind Google Maps. [3] [4] The majority of the companies acquired by AOL are based in the United States. As of April 2008, AOL has acquired 41 companies. Most of the acquired companies are related to the internet, including several internet service providers and web browsers.

In 2001, AOL merged with Time Warner to become AOL Time Warner. Due to the larger market capitalization of AOL, it gained ascendancy in the merger, with its executives largely displacing Time Warner's despite AOL's far smaller assets and revenues. AOL was spun off as its own independent company from Time Warner in 2009.

Acquisitions

Acquisition dateCompanyBusinessCountryValue (USD)References
May 1994Redgate Communications Internet service provider Flag of the United States.svg  USA $35,000,000 [5]
November 1994 BookLink Web browser Flag of the United States.svg  USA $30,000,000 [6]
30 November 1994 NaviSoft Web server Flag of the United States.svg  USA [7]
February 1995 Advanced Network and Services Non-Profit Flag of the United States.svg  USA $35,000,000 [8]
May 1995 Medior User interface design Flag of the United States.svg  USA [9]
May 1995 WAIS Inc. Search engine technology Flag of the United States.svg  USA $15,000,000 [10]
1 June 1995 WebCrawler Search engine Flag of the United States.svg  USA [11]
22 September 1995 Ubique Virtual placesFlag of Israel.svg  ISR $16,981,000 [12] [13]
1 February 1996 Johnson-Grace Data compression Flag of the United States.svg  USA [14]
6 August 1996 ImagiNation Network Online game Flag of the United States.svg  USA [15]
25 November 1996 Global Network Navigator Web browser Flag of the United States.svg  USA [16]
10 November 1997 CompuServe Online service Flag of the United States.svg  USA $175,000,000 [17]
26 January 1998 Personal Library Software Search engine Flag of the United States.svg  USA [18]
8 June 1998 Mirabilis Instant messaging Flag of Israel.svg  ISR $287,000,000 [19]
24 November 1998 Netscape Web browser Flag of the United States.svg  USA $4.2×10^9 [20]
5 April 1999When.comWeb-based calendarFlag of the United States.svg  USA $225,000,000 [21]
27 May 1999 Moviefone Film database Flag of the United States.svg  USA $525,000,000 [22]
1 June 1999 Nullsoft Media player Flag of the United States.svg  USA $80,000,000 [23]
1 June 1999 Spinner.com Media player Flag of the United States.svg  USA $320,000,000 [23]
October 1999 Gateway.net Internet service provider Flag of the United States.svg  USA $800,000,000 [24]
3 December 1999 Tegic Predictive text Flag of the United States.svg  USA [25]
22 December 1999 MapQuest Web mapping Flag of the United States.svg  USA $1.1×10^9 [26]
2 September 2000 Quack.com Voiceportal Flag of the United States.svg  USA $200,000,000 [27] [28]
5 September 2000 iAmaze HTML editor Flag of the United States.svg  USA [29]
19 May 2001InfoInterActive Telecommunications Flag of Canada (Pantone).svg  CAN $28,200,000 [30]
July 2001 eVoice Telecommunications Flag of the United States.svg  USA [31]
19 November 2003 Singingfish Audio/Video search engine Flag of the United States.svg  USA [32]
24 June 2004 Advertising.com Online advertising Flag of the United States.svg  USA $435,000,000 [33]
3 August 2004 MailBlocks E-mail service provider Flag of the United States.svg  USA [34]
3 August 2005 Xdrive Online file storage Flag of the United States.svg  USA [35]
7 August 2005 Wildseed Mobile software Flag of the United States.svg  USA [36]
5 October 2005 Weblogs, Inc. Weblog network Flag of the United States.svg  USA [37]
3 November 2005MusicNow Online music store Flag of the United States.svg  USA [38]
10 January 2006 Truveo Video search engine Flag of the United States.svg  USA [39]
17 May 2006Lightningcast Internet marketing Flag of the United States.svg  USA [40]
13 August 2006 Userplane Social network service Flag of the United States.svg  USA [41]
16 August 2006 GameDaily Video game journalism Flag of the United States.svg  USA [42]
8 November 2006 Relegence Financial services Flag of Israel.svg  ISR [43]
14 May 2007 Third Screen Media Mobile advertising Flag of the United States.svg  USA [44]
15 May 2007 Adtech Advertising technology provider Flag of Germany.svg  DEU [45]
23 July 2007 Tacoda Advertising network Flag of the United States.svg  USA $285,000,000 [46]
7 November 2007Yedda Social Search Flag of Israel.svg  ISR [47]
7 November 2007 Quigo Advertising network Flag of the United States.svg  USA [48]
5 February 2008 buy.at Affiliate network Flag of the United States.svg  USA [49]
13 March 2008 Bebo Social network service Flag of the United Kingdom.svg  UK $850,000,000 [50]
28 March 2008Emurse.com Resume creation & Job hunting siteFlag of the United States.svg  USA [ citation needed ]
14 April 2008 Sphere Web search engine Flag of the United States.svg  USA [51]
15 August 2008 Socialthing Social Network AggregatorFlag of the United States.svg  USA [52]
11 June 2009 Patch Media Local search (Internet) Flag of the United States.svg  USA [53]
11 June 2009Going Local search (Internet) Flag of the United States.svg  USA [54]
15 July 2009 MMAFighting.com MMA blog Flag of the United States.svg  USA [55]
25 January 2010StudioNow Internet video Flag of the United States.svg  USA $36,500,000 [56]
31 August 2010Rally Up mobile applications Flag of the United States.svg  USA [57]
28 September 20105Min Mediavideo syndicationFlag of Israel.svg  ISR $65,000,000 [58]
28 September 2010 TechCrunch Technology blog Flag of the United States.svg  USA [59]
28 September 2010Thing Labs mobile applications Flag of the United States.svg  USA [60]
1 December 2010Unblab email Flag of the United States.svg  USA [61]
16 December 2010Pictela content marketing Flag of the United States.svg  USA [62]
20 December 2010 About.me social networking Flag of the United States.svg  USA [63]
31 January 2011GoViral Online video distribution Flag of Denmark.svg  DEN $96,700,000 [64]
7 February 2011 The Huffington Post news Flag of the United States.svg  USA $315,000,000 [65]
4 March 2011Outside.inLocal / NewsFlag of the United States.svg  USA [66]
15 March 2012Hipster mobile applications Flag of the United States.svg  USA [67]
4 December 2012BuysightProduct Level RetargetingFlag of the United States.svg  USA [68]
13 February 2013gdgtgadget reviews media outletFlag of the United States.svg  USA [69]
7 August 2013Adap.tv Video advertising Flag of the United States.svg  USA $405,000,000 [70]
23 January 2014Gravity Native advertising Flag of the United States.svg  USA $90,700,000 [71]
6 May 2014 Convertro Attribution (marketing) Flag of the United States.svg  USA $101,000,000 [72]
21 May 2014Precision Demand Attribution (marketing) Flag of the United States.svg  USA $405,000,000 [73] [74]
1 December 2014VidibleVideo management and exchange platformFlag of the United States.svg  USA $50,000,000 [75]
March 2015Velos Predictive analytics Flag of the United States.svg  USA [76]
23 October 2015 Millennial Media Mobile advertising Flag of the United States.svg  USA $238,000,000 [77]
August 2015Ashe AvenueWeb Development GroupFlag of the United States.svg  USA [78]
31 August 2015Kanvas Labs mobile applications Flag of the United States.svg  USA [79]
25 January 2016AlephDPublisher AnalyticsFlag of France.svg  France [80]
20 April 2016RYOT Immersive Media Company and Virtual Content StudioFlag of the United States.svg  USA [81]

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