BoomTown has learned that AOL is offering those who “volunteer” to leave the company now a departure package that ranges from three to nine months of pay, compared to one to four months for employees laid off in the first quarter of next year.
It’s a depressing rock-and-a-hard-place choice.
An AOL spokesperson confirmed the offer, which is part of a massive layoff of 2,500 of its 6,000-person workforce.
According to sources close to the situation, Index Ventures and Michelangelo Volpi are out of the deal to buy Skype–and their lawsuit-loving nemeses, the founders of the Internet telephony service, are in.
More details to come, but it’s sure proof that the legal system, such as it was used, works.
The legal high jinks in the contentious battle over the fate of Skype got worse this afternoon, as former Joost CEO Michelangelo Volpi and Index Ventures filed a motion to dismiss a lawsuit brought by the founders of Skype–Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis, via Joost and Joltid–against them.
It’s yet another chess move among a group of well-known tech players, who used to work together closely and are now at odds.
As BoomTown promised earlier today, here’s the first of many filings related to the Yahoo-Microsoft online search and advertising deal announced last week.
The 8-K filing was made with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
A couple highlights: No termination fee and a $50 million annual payment to Yahoo by Microsoft for three years, for unspecified “transition and implementation costs” beyond the agreement.
(Personally, I think it’s for extra Advil needed for the headaches engendered organizing this circus.)
Yesterday, in a quarterly regulatory filing, Google stated what everyone and their mother and their sisters and their cousins and their aunts have known for about, say, years now:
That its $1 billion investment in AOL, made in 2005 at a $20 billion valuation, “may be impaired.”
While that makes it sound like AOL has had a few too many beers, actually, this is accounting- speak for: Our investment has tanked big time.
Kara Swisher started covering digital issues for The Wall Street Journal's San Francisco bureau in 1997 and also wrote the BoomTown column about the sector. With Walt Mossberg, she co-produces and co-hosts D: All Things Digital, a major high-tech and media conference. Read more »
Here is a statement of my ethics and coverage policies. It is more than most of you want to know, but, in the age of suspicion of the media, I am laying it all out.
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