AOL prepares to lay off up to 1,200 SAN FRANCISCO — The struggling Internet company AOL was laying off up to 1,200 workers this week because it didn’t get enough volunteers to accept buyouts. AOL spokeswoman Tricia Primrose said Monday that only 1,100 had volunteered to leave. That means AOL would need to shed up to 1,200 positions to reach its previously announced reduction target of up to 2,300, or about a third of its work force. The cuts, which were on top of thousands of positions shed in recent years, came as AOL separated from Time Warner Inc. last month. AOL acquired Time Warner at the height of the dot-com boom in 2001, but the combination proved disastrous, prompting Time Warner to spin AOL off as a separate company. In recent years, the company formerly known as America Online has been trying to reinvent itself as a content and advertising company as the legacy dial-up Internet access business that made the company famous steadily declined. But AOL has struggled in that transformation as its advertising revenue has failed to offset the drop in revenue from the dial-up business.
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