AOL has completed its $315 million purchase of online news hub The Huffington Post. The acquisition is the latest move by CEO Tim Armstrong to reinvent the Internet icon as a go-to source for online news and other content.
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This is the largest purchase AOL Inc. has made under Armstrong, a former Google advertising executive hired by AOL to engineer a turnaround.
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Huffington Post is one of the top 10 current events and global news sites, with over 27 million U.S. visitors each month. The Web site covers a host of topics from politics to style to food, combining original work by Huffington Post’s staff with links to articles and video from other news outlets.
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The site has also become well-known for blog posts from celebrity contributors who work for free in return for a platform to express their opinions. Bill Gates and Robert Redford have written for Huffington Post as have several university presidents.
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All told, AOL says the combined site will attract about 117 million U.S. visitors each month and 253 million worldwide.
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The deal also adds Huffington Post co-founder Arianna Huffington to AOL managerial roster. She will run AOL’s expanding stable of Web sites, which include popular technology blogs Engadget and TechCrunch, Patch.com’s network of suburban news sites and online mapping service MapQuest.
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Huffington, a media star in her own right, became a prominent public figure as the wife of a multimillionaire running for the U.S. Senate in 1994. At the time, she disavowed any interest in becoming a political candidate herself, but made an aborted run for California governor in 2003.
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Armstrong has been trying to build AOL’s online news business since he was hired to reshape the company in April 2009. The makeover is designed to attract more visitors to AOL’s Web sites to help boost ad sales. AOL had just a…