"Verizon hasn’t made a formal proposal to AOL, and no agreement is imminent, said the people, who asked not to be named because the discussions are private."
I'm calling bullshit.
The leak and its timing is curious, but Bloomberg didn't invent this story. It's coming from one of those companies.
Or from an associated bank, law firm, etc.
If this were so, the single biggest champion of net neutrality in monetary terms would be silenced by one of its biggest villains.
Wasn't there previously a famous takeover of a media company by a communications company that didn't go so well?
So Verizon is becoming a content company as well, just like Comcast.
...or they see the business of folks not bothering to cancel their AOL dialup account as complementary to folks not bothering to cancel their landline POTS.
And now you can combine them onto one AOLrizon bill!
AOL has built up a formidable arsenal of video ad tech in recent years. Surely Verizon is more interested in that rather than whatever clicky content AOL is shipping these days.
I'm ignorant - explain how it's useful?
The cynical side of me thinks its useless without high quality video content, which AOL lacks. The greatest video ad tech sucks if you don't have the brand name sponsors, but those are only attracted to higher quality content.
Verizon has some interesting content deals, like the rights to NFL on mobile devices.
Well they are more or less right down the road from each other.