I'm not sure what to make of this, although what's left of computing's chattering classes are eating it up.

$435 million for an online ad placement agency. And what the chattering classes demand most is that it be "integrated," that is, folded totally inside AOL rather than allowed to run by itself.

Uh, yeah.

This assumes, I think, that AOL knows how to run anything, that it has A Clue. This is what lawyers would call "a fact not in evidence."

Since its founding, and certainly through the dot-bomb, AOL has been marked by arrogance at the highest levels, an attitude that it could (and should) control the Internet and Internet commerce.

But the Internet can do very well without AOL. And AOL has been forced to pay (my guess is over-pay) in order to get a piece of the Internet advertising action.

It's a small piece. Anyone with a memory knows how sticky Internet advertising relationships are not. There is no way to guarantee Advertising.Com's clients will want to stay after this deal, especially after the company is "integrated," which is a bit like the assimiliation of the Borg.

"Integrating" a company into an existing operation is a long, slow painful process. People get fired, and everyone else worries a lot more about whether they'll have a job and how they can butter up their new boss than they do about doing their job. That's a reality no matter who's doing the acquiring.

What seems clear to me, however, is that AOL isn't what's buying Advertising.Com. Time Warner is buying Advertising.Com for the AOL unit. Time Warner knows something about advertising, and may seek to reassure customers it can bring them more value under its umbrella. That's how this is going down. If the folks at Advertising.Com are nice, they might even replace the AOL advertising people, and do their business from inside the new Time Warner towers.

Time Warner bought Advertising.Com. ClickZ can't even get a headline right anymore.