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As Time Warner nears a decision on a big alliance with Google or Microsoft for its America Online unit, Steve Case, the co-founder of AOL, has spoken out against the plan, aligning himself with the thinking of the financier Carl Icahn, who has called on Time Warner's board to break up the company.

Case, who recently resigned as a Time Warner director, wrote in an essay in The Washington Post on Sunday that "although I played a key role in bringing AOL and Time Warner together six years ago, it's now my view that it would be best to 'undo' the merger by splitting Time Warner into several independent companies and allowing AOL to set off on its own path."

His comments came after a week of increasingly vituperative and personal attacks between Icahn, who directly and indirectly controls 3 percent of the company's shares, and Richard D. Parsons, Time Warner's chief executive. The sniping has gone far beyond the norm in corporate takeover battles but has framed the question of how the world's largest media company should shape its future. Time Warner, like the rest of the industry, is trying to make calculated bets about how information will be created and delivered in coming decades.

Case's broadside also highlights the mountain of ill feelings that still surround the merger of AOL and Time Warner at the height of the Internet bubble five years ago, and the financial and managerial debacle that ensued.
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Read More / Source: News.com