Yesterday, AOL Time Warner's board of directors voted to erase the most visible reminder of that failed marriage of old and new media. The company now will be known as Time Warner Inc., reverting to the name of the stalwart entertainment giant that was gobbled up by the cocky dot.com.

The name-change was seen as a symbolic attempt to soothe any lingering resentments directed at the online division, whose troubles have dragged down the entire company and its once-golden stock price.

In many quarters, the vote was seen as a rebuke of former AOL Time Warner Chairman Steve Case.

"It's clearly a slap in the face for Steve Case," said Ken Marlin, managing partner of investment bank Marlin & Associates in New York.

Case, a graduate of Punahou School, was a chief architect of the merger and had opposed calls for a name change in the past.

Case engineered the acquisition of Time Warner using soaring AOL shares, stock that plunged in value shortly thereafter when the dot-com bubble burst. Case stepped down as chairman this year amid pressure from shareholders but still serves on the company's board.

The new Time Warner chairman, Richard D. Parsons, a University of Hawai'i graduate, initially feared dropping the AOL name would hurt the online unit's brand image. But he said yesterday he supported the name change.