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According to TechCrunch, AOL (News - Alert) confirmed earlier this week that it had laid off 100 employees, many of them in its call center. The company was recently purchased for $4.4 billion by Verizon (News - Alert) and the moves are intended to eliminate duplicated positions resulting from that transaction. It is the latest in a history of events that has seen AOL evolve from being primarily a dial-up provider to a digital media company.

Those who used dial-up Internet access back in the 1990s will recall AOL’s early days as a provider with rivals like CompuServe and Prodigy. It merged with Time Warner in 2000 to form AOL Time Warner in a deal totaling $165 billion.

The marriage of the two companies was far from being the kind made in heaven. According to The New York Times, there were cultural conflicts and the spread of broadband in the 2000s dealt a blow to AOL’s dial-up service. Both companies spun off in December 2009 and were considerably smaller players in their respective markets.

Believe it or not, you can still get dial-up service from AOL, but the company’s main focus has shifted to digital media and brand development. TechCrunch and Huffington Post (News - Alert) are its most significant media acquisitions.

Although AOL has had some success in reinventing itself, it remained a relatively small player in a market dominated by giants like Google (News - Alert), Yahoo!, and Microsoft. Becoming a part of Verizon gives it the muscle it needs to continue the fight.

Verizon benefits from the deal because it allows the telecom to enter a new market, especially since there’s not as much growth to be found in its traditional offerings. The company has been selling off its landlines, DSL connections, and parts of FiOS (News - Alert), an FTTH service. Regulators are also unlikely to support any attempt by Verizon to acquire a competitor like T-Mobile. The purchase of AOL gives the company somewhere else to go business-wise.

The recent round of pink slips at AOL is unfortunate, but is also a reality of the business world. Acquisitions often lead to overlap in some areas and that leads to layoffs. What will be interesting to see is whether or not the Verizon-AOL deal benefits both companies in the long run or becomes another bust like AOL Time Warner.