Google recently purchased a 5 percent stake in AOL from Time Warner, AOL's parent company, for $1 billion. Recent regulatory filings show that Google will have the right to sell the stake as early as 2008, the New York Times reports.
The filings say that starting two and a half years into the five-year agreement, Google will have the right to force Time Warner to register its shares in AOL with the Securities and Exchange Commission. This would allow Google to sell the shares on the public market. Time Warner has the option to buy the shares back for cash or Time Warner shares at an appraised value.
On Tuesday, when the deal was announced, Eric E. Schmidt, the chief executive of Google, said in an interview that "we are long-term investors" in AOL.
In an e-mail statement yesterday, Lynn Fox, a Google spokeswoman, said: "In private equity investments it is common to have a set of investor rights similar to the ones we have. This does not mean that there is an intent to exercise the rights."
But should Google decide to do so, it could sell the shares back to Time Warner or to Microsoft for a higher price. This may go against the grain for Google, as it could be deemed as evil.
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