Headquarters relocation
On September 17, 2007, AOL announced it was moving its corporate headquarters from Dulles (Virginia) to New York and combining their different ad units into a new subsidiary called platform. This action followed several advertising acquisitions, mainly advertising.com and highlights the company’s new focus on business models based on advertising. AOL cartoon created in 2008 to explain the behavioral targeting to its users, showing how a user’s past visits to other sites can determine the content of the ads you see in the future. The address of AOL stated that “significant operations” would remain in Dulles, which includes access services to the company and banks of modems. In late September 2007 as part of the preparation for shipment to New York, AOL completed the closure of his former primary center Network Operations in Reston (Virginia), which sold to Sprint Nextel Corporation in early 2007.This sale allowed AOL to consolidate its operations in Northern Virginia from three locations (Dulles, Manassas, Reston) to two (Dulles and Manassas, personnel mainly went to Dulles, misntras the machines were moved to Manassas). AOL benefited from the transfer reducing total inventory of hardware and determining a “right way” for staff of Network Operations Center after consolidate its three offices in two. As part of the impending move to New York and the restructuring of responsibilities in the complex after the transfer of Dulles Reston, AOL chief executive Randy Falco announced on October 15, 2007 plans to lay off 2,000 employees around the world end of 2007, beginning “immediately.”That afternoon, more than 750 employees at Dulles received news from attending a meeting in the early morning the next day, these employees were sacked on October 16, 2007, while employees remained on the payroll until December 14 2007 in accordance with the Act of Adjustment Retraining Notification and Labour. Other employees whose groups were closed as part of the restructuring were informed on October 16, 2007 that were to be maintained until December 14, 2007 to complete any task ahead, after which they would be fired. The reduction of force was so great that virtually every conference room Dulles complex was reserved for the day as a “Special Purpose Room,” in which there were several aspects of the dismissal process for departing employees.The employees who remained in Dulles quickly dubbed the mass dismissal as “Bloody Tuesday” in online blogs and news. An unspecified number of staff in the old installation on CompuServe in Columbus (Ohio) was also dismissed, and any group Quality Analysis Tucson (Arizona), several AOL employees working in the former facilities of Netscape in Mountain View, the development team in France andvirtually all members of the meeting in Moncton (Canada). The end result was almost 40 of layoffs template AOL, including a substantial number of personnel systems, a significant change from previous layoffs sysops where employees suffered only minor reductions in personnel. made an additional round of layoffs, mainly concentrated in the focus groups and on the staff of Voice Services in Halifax (Nova Scotia) that occurred 11 to December 12, 2007.