The search advertising company should see a quick turnaround for its $1 billion investment in Time Warner’s AOL, as SEC filings from Google indicate.
“All he had to do was turn his eyes dead when he looked at a slow pay, not say more than three words, and the guy would sell his wife’s car to make the payment.”
— loan shark Chili Palmer’s collection method, in Elmore Leonard’s Get Shorty
Whenever Google Calendar finally debuts, be sure to mark July 1, 2008, as an important date. That’s the first day Google can potentially cash in on the deal it has made with Time Warner for a 5 percent stake in AOL.
The form 8-K filing Google submitted to the Securities and Exchange Commission gives a summary of the rights Google now has as part of the agreement. Google will be able to require the holding company with the AOL rights to register them for an initial public offering, July 1 of 2008 being the first date they can do so.
If Time Warner doesn’t want to see those shares go public, it will have to pay Google either cash, shares, or a mix of those depending on the appraised fair-market value of the investment at that time.
The value of that investment will rise or fall depending on the success of online advertising for AOL, which gains the right to sell Google AdWords text-based ads on AOL properties.
AOL has been aggressively moving toward what it calls an “audience-supported” model, and shifted its content from the walled garden of the subscription model as its subscriber numbers decline. Advertising will be the factor that drives AOL’s profitability.
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David Utter is a staff writer for murdok covering technology and business.
