As Time Warner (TWX) prepares to spin AOL off as a separate company, it's bought back the 5% stake in AOL that Google (GOOG) bought in 2006 -- for almost a quarter of what Google paid for it.
According to a regulatory filing -- via the FT's Ken Li -- Time Warner repurchased Google's 5% stake for $283 million on July 8. That's about 1/4 of the $1 billion that Google paid for it in April, 2006. And it values AOL at $5.7 billion.
That's actually a slightly higher valuation -- up 3% -- than Google calculated when it wrote down $726 million of its investment in January.
Of course, Google's investment came with other benefits -- namely, a search and display ad partnership, and collaboration on video and IM. The Google relationship generated $678 million in revenue for AOL in 2008, $642 million in 2007, and $573 million in 2006, according to the filing.
