You may not be aware of it, but many of the companies encountered in daily life are actually owned by larger corporations.

For example, before they merged, both AOL and Time Warner had acquired a string of companies that you probably know. Time Inc., longtime publisher of Time, Sports Illustrated, and People magazines, bought Warner Communications in 1990 and Turner Broadcasting System in 1996.

Over the years, AOL purchased Netscape and CompuServe, both Internet companies.

Here is a list of some familiar names that now reside under the AOL Time Warner roof:

• MapQuest, CompuServe (AOL)
  
  
• HBO, In Style, Fortune, Entertainment Weekly, Teen People (Time Inc.)
  
  
• "The West Wing", "ER", "Friends", "The Drew Carey Show" (Warner Bros. Television)
  
  
• "Charmed", "Popular", "Dawson's Creek" (The WB Television Network)
  
  
• Looney Tunes, MAD magazine, DC comics (Warner Bros.)
  
  
• Red Hot Chili Peppers, Faith Hill, Metallica, The Coors, Madonna (Warner Music Group)
  
  
• CNN, Cartoon Network, Atlanta Braves, TBS Superstation (Turner Broadcasting System)
  
  
• The Matrix, You've Got Mail, Pay It Forward, The Green Mile (Warner Bros. Pictures)
  
  

There's more! See a complete list of AOL Time Warner companies.

AOL agreed to purchase Time Warner for a specified amount of stock, then valued at about $180 billion. One billion dollars might be a relatively small amount in the world of mergers and acquisitions, but it can be difficult to comprehend such a large sum. It's easier to grasp such a significant amount of money if it's put into an everyday perspective.

• AOL Time Warner's Atlanta Braves baseball team plays at Turner Field, which has a seating capacity of almost 50,000. If, as a promotional event, AOL Time Warner decided to distribute $1 billion equally among the crowd, each fan would receive $20,000.
  
  
• If AOL Time Warner decided to distribute $1 billion on a larger scale, it could give about $3.63 to every person in America or almost $1.00 to every person in India.
  
  
• Think about this: If you were born in the year AD 1, and spent $1,000 every day, you would not yet have spent $1 billion. How much would you have left? In what year would you have spent it all?
  
  
• If you stacked $1 billion in $1 bills, the stack would be 80 miles (120 km) high.
  
  
• How much would you earn every year if you put $1 billion in the bank at 5% annual interest? How much would that be per day? per hour?
  
  
• Did you know: In America, one billion is 1,000 millions or 1,000,000,000 or 10 ⁹ . In Britain, one billion is 1 million millions or 1,000,000,000,000 or 10 ¹² .

Read the following information from AOL Time Warner's 2000 annual report and answer the questions. AOL's "more than 21 million members now average more than an hour online each day" sending "more than 120 million e-mails… ."

• On average, how many e-mails does each AOL member send each day? Each week?
  
  
• If the average time online increased to 1.5 hours each day, how would the number of e-mails change?

"[E]ight of Time Inc.'s [magazine] titles ranked in the top 30 in advertising revenues."

• What percentage of the top 30 magazines was published by Time Inc.?

"In 1999, WMG [Warner Music Group] artists were responsible for 38 of the year's top 200 best-selling albums in the U.S."

• What percentage of the top 200 albums was part of WMG?

Learn More

• Look at Riverdeep's Destination MATH activity Whole Numbers to One Million to make sense of the concept of large numbers.
  
• Read the Riverdeep Today article, "Perspective on the Stock Market," to gain an understanding of how changes in the market affect the economy.

More Links

• The AOL Time Warner merger may be a done deal, but it will continue to generate a lot of press. Keep on top of the latest by reviewing the most recent press releases.
  
  
• CNNfyi featured a story about PepsiCo's recent acquisition of Quaker Oats. There is also an accompanying discussion-activity.

Related Resources

• Take a look at some of the most important stories in the TIME Annual 1999-2000 by the editors of Time magazine.
  
  
• Review the year pictorially in LIFE Year in Pictures from the editors of LIFE magazine. (Time and LIFE magazines are part of the AOL Time Warner publishing group.)