According to multiple sources, AOL is planning to make around 5000 employees – half a quarter of it’s workforce – redundant (that’s "laid-off" in American). I can’t say I’m really surprised.
AOL, which reportedly once had 30 million subscribers but now has around 19 million, rode the dotcom boom, merged with Time Warner, lost shareholders around $200 billion and has floundered around as one of the last old style internet services (as opposed to internet service provider). In 2006 PC World listed AOL at the top of it’s list of "25 worst tech products of all time". Much of AOL’s content is publicly available – or there is better similar content out there already – and the internet access it provides can be bought cheaper elsewhere which begs the question: why would anyone bother with it?