Verizon has announced that it plans to buy AOL for $4.4 billion, thus acquiring a number of high-profile websites such as The Huffington Post, TechCrunch and EnGadget.
Though AOL’s CEO Tim Armstrong is set to continue to lead the publications following the deal, it is likely to leave employees at the involved publications concerned given Verizon’s history of trying to micro-manage its owned entities, with The Next Web noting that the company once attempted to start up a tech blog called Sugarstring that was outright banned from mentioning stories on net neutrality and government spying. If this mentality is to continue over to their newly acquired sites, it could spell bad news for the future of the likes of TechCrunch and EnGadget.
TechCrunch revealed the memo that was sent out to the company’s employees from AOL’s management, which you can read in full below:
AOLers –
As you have heard me say many times over the last 5 years since we became an independent AOL, we are building toward becoming the largest media technology company in the world. While there are search platforms, social platforms, and commerce platforms, we have built a very meaningful media platform and AOL today is a media platform company powering our brands and the brands of over 30,000 partners.
If there is one key to our journey to building the largest digital media platform in the world, it is mobile. Mobile will represent 80% of consumers’ media consumption in the coming years and if we are going to lead, we need to lead in mobile. Over the last 18 months we set a goal of moving AOL into a leading position in mobile, mobile video, and mobile registered consumers. We are approaching 400 million global consumers, we have built one of the best advertising platforms in the world, and we have one of the most talented teams in the world – and now it is time for us to fully open up the mobile frontier.Today, we are announcing that the largest and most innovative wireless and cable company – and the one investing the most in high quality mobile content – is acquiring AOL with the strategy of building the biggest media platform in the world. The company is Verizon and the deal will game-change the size and scale of AOL’s opportunity. Just as AOL has propelled The Huffington Post, Adap.tv, TechCrunch, and other companies we have acquired, Verizon will propel AOL and comes to the table with over 100 million mobile consumers, content deals with the likes of the NFL, and a meaningful strategy in mobile video.
The decision to enter into an agreement with Verizon was made over a long and thoughtful time period and both companies see significant opportunity to service consumers and customers in a differentiated and exciting way. On a personal level, the decision to go forward with an agreement was predicated on giving our talent the best opportunity to build a multi-decade business that would be deeply growth oriented and aimed directly at the platform shift that video and mobile are offering the world – today and 20 years from now.There are two important questions you might have at this point in the letter:
1. What does this mean?
2. What does this mean for me (meaning you)?The deal means we will be a division of Verizon and we will oversee AOL’s current assets plus additional assets from Verizon that are targeted at the mobile and video media space. The deal will not change our strategy – it will expand it greatly. The deal will give our content businesses more distribution and it will give our advertisers more distribution and mobile-first features. The deal will add scale and it will add a mobile lens to everything we do inside of our content, video, and ads strategy.
For you this means growth, it means mobile, and it means compensation that will be equal or better to your AOL compensation. Your benefits will not change in 2015. We will eventually go on Verizon’s benefit plan, but that won’t happen until 2016 or later and we will work with Verizon to make sure the benefits are strong and cover important areas of people’s lives. Your job and what you do on a daily basis should be enhanced by the market opportunity this deal is targeted to capture. The simple answer to the question of “what does this mean for you?” should be, “I just got more resources, more support and more growth opportunity.”
The leadership at AOL is staying and I am staying – enthusiastically, and we made that part of the deal. We have the opportunity to build a unique and globally scaled media technology company with the scale and resources we need to make that happen. Verizon and AOL are very large partners today – in content, in ads, and in the technology. We know their team well and they know our team well. The cultures share very similar values and are both working on very similar ways to do good while doing well. Diversity and women’s leadership are at the top of both companies’ agendas and we look forward to having a consumer and industry impact on those important issues.
The future in front of AOL and the industry requires scale, mobile, and video – and partnerships. In our lifetime, we will see the connection of the world on very large and very fast networks – and to play in that world with our strategy requires us to take the natural steps to secure our ability to shoot for the stars. This deal is aimed at the stars and we are going to pursue the joint vision of building the most significant media platform in the world.
I have been a buyer of AOL over the last 5 years – and that is an investment in one thing – our talent. We have reviewed every hire coming into the company over the last 5 years and we have taken extraordinary risks and faced extraordinary challenges over the last 5 years. There is nothing more meaningful than watching our team turn-around this great company and restoring it to growth when most people had left it for dead.
AOL is back and now we are joining forces with Verizon to build the best media technology company in the world.Let’s mobilize. – TA
Though the memo claims that the sites’ content strategy will not be harmed, it seems a little optimistic to believe that Verizon will not want a hand in stories that could stand to harm its financial bottom line, such as those about net neutrality. With The Huffington Post and TechCrunch in particular being vocal opponents of net neutrality, would it be possible for them to continue such stories under the watchful eye of Verizon, especially considering Verizon’s own tech site was given such gross limitations as to what its reporters could and couldn’t cover?
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Alongside its acquisition of these sites, Verizon will also claim ownership of AOL’s dial-up business, which still pulls in over $180 million per quarter. It remains to be seen whether or not this deal will ultimately harm the editorial integrity of these sites, but we remain hopeful that Verizon won’t tamper with a winning formula and will refrain from meddling with them. That hope is probably misplaced, though, given Verizon’s track record.
Photos: Getty Images
