AOL ate Time Warner. And they did it just in time too, before the fraudulently-inflated value of AOL stock nosedived and took Time Warner down with it. I will always be convinced that was Steve Case's master plan all along: he knew AOL's business plan was illegitimate and could not sustain itself indefinitely, just like every other dotcom out there, so he waited until the stock value became big enough that he could buy out a well-established company with actual assets and profits, and then he'd be on top even if AOL fell apart. And it worked, too. AOL would probably be out of business today if they'd never merged. Instead, Steve Case is set for life. Yeah, he just had to give up his chairmanship, and Time Warner is worth less than half of what it was before the merger, but Steve Case is still worth more than all of us combined, and since he's still got all his stock, he'll be even richer one Time Warner finally gets the cojones to jettison AOL and get back to making money again instead of pouring cash down a giant sewer in Vienna, Virginia.