So let’s get this straight: AOL just spent $315-million to buy the Huffington Post, a move that makes it a “next-generation publishing” entity?

First reaction is not why AOL decided to buy Huffington Post but why Arianna Huffington sold to AOL. Of course, there are 315 million reasons to justify the deal but why throw in the towel to AOL when you’ve got the world in the palm of your hand as the world’s largest and most influential online publisher?

It’s not like Huffington needs the money personally or whether the Huffington Post is lacking growth capital. At the apex of her career, Huffington made a strange decision by taking the money and running. Maybe her investors made her do it given the size of the AOL offer, which is five times the HP’s sales. After six years at the helm, maybe Huffington wants to focus on giving speeches and writing books rather than running a fast-growing online publishing company.

Whatever the reason, AOL is placing a huge bet not only the Huffington Post but the value of content to create a lucrative digital platform. For those of you with a sense of history, AOL pulled the same trick a decade ago with a marriage to Time-Warner in the name of digital convergence – and we all know how well that turned out.

With Huffington Post and TechCrunch now in the fold, AOL has swooped up two of the highest profile digital publishers and, along with it, two of the more interesting entrepreneurs (Huffington and TechCrunch’s Mike Arrington) along with it.

All I can say is “interesting”.