It was announced on May 28, 2009 by Time Warner that AOL would spin off AOL into a separate public company, which is scheduled to occur on December 9, 2009, ending the 8 year relationship between the two companies.

Description

With regional branches around the world, the former American "goliath among Internet service providers" once had more than 30 million subscribers on several continents. In January 2000, AOL and Time Warner announced plans to merge. The terms of the deal negotiated called for AOL shareholders to own 55% of the new, combined company. The deal closed on January 11, 2001 after receiving regulatory approval from the FTC, the FCC and the European Union.

America Online, Inc., as the company was then called, was led by executives from AOL, SBI and Time Warner. Gerald Levin, who had served as CEO of Time Warner, was CEO of the new company. Steve Case served as Chairman, J. Michael Kelly (from AOL) was the Chief Financial Officer, Robert W. Pittman (from AOL) and Dick Parsons (from Time Warner) served as Co-Chief Operating Officers. The total value of AOL stock subsequently went from $226 billion to about $20 billion. Similarly, its customer base has decreased to 10.1 million subscribers as of November 2007, just narrowly ahead of Comcast and AT&T Yahoo!.