MerithewAOL announced Tuesday that it has purchased the influential technology blog Techcrunch for an undisclosed sum, adding it to their stable of content sites that range from the gadget blog Engadget to local news site Patch.com.

“TechCrunch and its team will be an outstanding addition to the high-quality content on the AOL Technology Network, which is now a must-buy for advertisers seeking to associate their brands with leading technology content and its audience,” said AOL CEO Tim Armstrong in a press release reprinted on the TechCrunch site.

Rumors of the deal were reported Monday by Om Malik, news that disrupted TechCrunch’s Disrupt conference — being held this week in San Francisco to highlight Silicon Valley start-ups. The news of the acquisition was announced from the stage Tuesday morning. CNBC reports the deal is worth about $40 million.

Under the relentless work of its founder Michael Arrington, TechCrunch has grown in five years from one guy with a laptop to a network of sites and conferences, including MobileCrunch, CrunchGear, TechCrunchIT, GreenTech, TechCrunchTV and CrunchBase — along with offshoots in Europe and Japan.

TechCrunch will remain editorially independent, AOL said. Under Armstrong’s leadership, AOL has doubled down on its bet that fairly low-cost, original content will attract advertising dollars. AOL recently started a content factory called Seed that pays freelancers small amounts of money to create niche content. It’s not clear what the effect of the acquisition will have on AOL’s Daily Finance, which features original reporting from well-known journalists on topics that overlap with TechCrunch.

This isn’t the first blog network purchase for AOL, which, in 2005 for a rumored $25 million, snapped up the Weblogs, Inc. network of blogs founded by Jason Calacanis.

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See Also:

• TechCrunch Blogger Michael Arrington Can Generate Buzz … and Cash
• AOL To Launch 500 More Local ‘Patch’ Sites This Year
• AOL Becoming Automated, On-Demand Content Factory
• Super Angels Dance on the Head of a Techcrunch Pin
• Post, TechCrunch Mum on Syndication Deal

Authors: Ryan Singel

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