14 DAY TRIAL // AOL announced approximately one month ago that Winamp would be retired on December 20, explaining that users who want to keep the app running on their computers should get the existing builds as soon as possible.
It turns out however that Winamp might still live on beyond December 20, as a mysterious buyer is interested in taking over the application and the adjacent services.
TechCrunch is reporting, via some undisclosed sources, that Winamp could be purchased in the near future, which means that AOL might keep the application a little longer until negotiations comes to an end.
While AOL has refused to comment on such a scenario, previous reports indicated that Microsoft itself is interested in buying Winamp, even though it’s hard to imagine that Redmond would really need such an application since it already has Windows Media Player and is investing heavily in Xbox Music.
Microsoft has however refused to comment on these rumors, which could make us believe that the company might indeed be interested in saving Winamp.
AOL said on November 20 that it wants to completely retire Winamp without providing any official reason, recommending users to get the existing builds if they wish to continue running the application on their computers.
“Winamp.com and associated web services will no longer be available past December 20, 2013. Additionally, Winamp Media players will no longer be available for download. Please download the latest version before that date. See release notes for latest improvements to this last release. Thanks for supporting the Winamp community for over 15 years,” a notification posted on the Winamp.com website at that time stated.
As part of today’s history lesson, it’s worth mentioning that Winamp was developed by Justin Frankel and Dmitry Boldyrev for Nullsoft, the company that decided to sell it to AOL in June 1999 for no less than $80 million (€59.4 million) in stock.