AOL grew to become the largest online service, displacing established players like CompuServe and The Source. Verizon announced it would sell Yahoo and AOL to private equity firm Apollo Global Management for $5 billion. AOL was eventually spun off from Time Warner in 2009, with Tim Armstrong appointed the new CEO.
See also: AOL Mail, WarnerMedia, AIM (software), AOL (disambiguation), AOL Explorer, HuffPost.