Almost 10 years ago, in January, 2000, America Online CEO Steve Case announced one of the boldest, craziest ideas in modern business history: a $182 billion stock-and-debt deal to buy mighty Time Warner, creating an Internet and media colossus with a combined market cap of $350 billion. It was the largest takeover ever, and a symbol of the turn-of-the-millennium power of the Internet. "Together, they represent an unprecedented powerhouse," Bear Stearns analyst Scott Ehrens told CNNfn at the time. "If their mantra is content, this alliance is unbeatable."

Well, as it turned out, that wasn't even close to true. Almost a decade later, Bear Stearns is gone, and so is CNNfn. Steve Case quit as AOL Time Warner chairman in January 2003, and left the board for good in 2005. A few weeks ago, he sold a company called Revolution Money to American Express. Gerald Levin, the former Time Warner CEO who engineered the deal with Case, now helps his wife run a holistic health center in Los Angeles. And in less than two weeks, the great and terrible combination of AOL and Time Warner, mighty destroyer of careers and shareholder wealth, and vivid reminder of the excesses of the Internet bubble, finally will be undone.