AOL buys Weblogs Inc.?

Paidcontent.org reported this week that America Online will buy blog publisher Weblogs Inc.. Weblogs offers several dozen sites, including the popular Engadget tech blog.

Many observers saw it as a sign that blogging has finally hit the big time, at least with regards to advertising. Speculation immediately began on how other big media companies would react to the deal.

Blog community response:

"AOL intends to keep the company/blogs separate from its site, much in the vein of what is happening with other blog and Web 2.0 companies being bought. But this is perhaps the first pure content-related company being bought out in the blog/ Web 2.0 space...or at least of this scale."
--PaidContent.org

"Add this to the news that Nick Denton's Gawker Media has teamed up with international media conglomerate VNU, and it's easy to see that blogs are well on their way to becoming mainstream media."
--BL Ochman's WhatsNextblog

"So far, Microsoft's web portal, MSN, has yet to be linked with a b/network property. Given the heated nature of the discussion, it can only be a matter of time."
--The unauthorized Microsoft weblog

"This is certainly becoming the dominant business model - build something cool, get a large user base, then sell to a larger company. (Like eBay buying Skype just last month.) It kind of makes me sad. Isn't independence a viable business model? What examples are there of such acquisitions not slowing innovation, openness and responsiveness to a crawl?"
--Marshall Kirkpatrick