At first, many on Armstrong’s team had been awed by her energy and range, but they quickly grasped that these didn’t always translate into results. ‘‘No one else could give a commencement speech at Smith one day, meet the prime minister of Japan on Tuesday and debate the Middle East on MSNBC on Wednesday,’’ one former executive said. ‘‘But that doesn’t mean she knows the ins and outs of running Moviefone.’’ It didn’t help that AOL stock, following the acquisition, had fallen to less than $12 by August from just above $20 at the time of the purchase half a year earlier. At some point, Huffington stopped going to meetings of AOL executives, and in April 2012, an organizational reshuffling quietly moved every AOL site except The Huffington Post out of Huffington’s portfolio. Her tenure as AOL content czar was over.

By then, Huffington was having a serious case of seller’s remorse. During a tech conference, she was overheard at a bar in Rancho Palos Verdes, Calif., talking to the venture capitalist Scott Stanford, then a Goldman Sachs banker. Speaking in a voice loud enough for many to hear, she posed questions like, ‘‘Who would buy The Huffington Post?’’ and ‘‘How much would it fetch?’’ Around that time, Huffington Post employees recall, she went on trips with very rich people and returned with news that the site was about to be purchased again, this time for $1 billion.

But The Huffington Post was no longer Huffington’s to sell, and AOL seemed uninterested in parting with it. By October 2012, discontent with Huffington was widespread enough that top executives at AOL were quietly strategizing about ways to ease her into a kind of ceremonial role — one in which she would only promote the site rather than running its day-to-day operations. (A source said the effort was given a one-word shorthand: ‘‘Popemobile.’’ Like the Pope in his bulletproof bubble, Huffington would glide through the world and wave.) The idea never caught on, mostly because it was clear Huffington would never agree to it, and by May of this year, when Verizon announced its acquisition of AOL, it had long been abandoned.

Verizon went after AOL principally for its ad-buying technologies, but in mid-June, Verizon’s C.E.O. and chairman, Lowell McAdam, said he was committed to keeping The Huffington Post, as incidental as its acquisition may have been. Huffington, whose contract with AOL expired earlier in the year, wanted guarantees that Verizon would finance the site’s growth and keep its hands off articles with which it may have a difference of opinion — those on net neutrality, for instance.

Soon after the Verizon-AOL deal was announced, Huffington began to negotiate her future and the future of The Huffington Post. According to two sources, Armstrong suggested closing the acquisition first and prodding Verizon to make promises about The Huffington Post later. Huffington refused, and she held out until mid-June, when Verizon pledged more than $100 million a year for ongoing operations and vowed to give the site editorial autonomy. (Others with knowledge of the talks say that no financial commitments have been made yet.) The money will allow The Huffington Post to broaden its video offerings, supporting a 24-hour online network and what Huffington called, in an internal memo, a ‘‘rapid-response satire unit.’’ Assurances in hand, Huffington signed a new four-year contract that will keep her in situ as editor in chief.

None of this necessarily means that The Huffington Post will remain in Verizon’s permanent portfolio. In fact, if Verizon’s real goal is to offload the site, it has done exactly what it should to burnish the asset for eventual sale. Were suitors to come courting again, they would surely offer less for a Huffington-less Huffington Post.

That is not to say that Huffington is inexpensive to keep around. She flies all around the planet, occasionally with members of the A-Team in tow. A-Team duties include tending to Huffington’s Twitter account, her Instagram feed and her Facebook posts; running her errands; organizing her day; planning her travel; and prepping her speeches, which, if they aren’t pro bono, cost at least $100,000. One former A-Teamer recalled loading The Huffington Post on Huffington’s computer when she showed up at the office.