Over the last couple of years, an array of media companies, venture capitalists and wealthy individuals have quietly explored buying a stake in The Huffington Post. The most recent valuation, according to half a dozen people briefed on the matter: about $1 billion.

Those interested have included the European media companies Le Monde and Axel Springer; the Napster founder Sean Parker; and the private equity firm General Atlantic, those people said, speaking on condition of anonymity. Some of the talks were navigated by AOL, The Huffington Post's parent company, as it sought ways to raise money, others by the site's well-connected founder, Arianna Huffington.

But when the music stopped last month and Verizon's $4.4 billion takeover of AOL was announced, The Huffington Post was still owned by AOL — creating an unlikely corporate home for one of the nation's leading liberal news outlets.

Verizon executives have said that the primary reason for the purchase was AOL's advertising technology, so it is not completely clear what it might want with The Huffington Post, and how a relationship between them might work. It also is unclear whether the famously independent Ms. Huffington will be comfortable operating within Verizon. Her contract expired this year, and she has yet to sign a new one, which raises the prospect of a Huffington Post without a Huffington.

In a memo she sent to the site's leadership last week, she outlined ambitious plans. The Huffington Post will try to grow globally and expand its video operation, she said, and add to its network of unpaid bloggers, replace wire service articles with original reporting and increase comedy and lifestyle offerings. It might even make acquisitions of its own, according to a copy of the memo obtained by The New York Times. But Ms. Huffington has told friends, according to a person with knowledge of the conversations, that she is not yet sure that those plans can be executed under Verizon.

The quandary has left the site in a kind of limbo as each side prepares for the close of the deal, expected next month. AOL and Verizon executives, including the Verizon chief executive, Lowell C. McAdam, were meeting this week to discuss a range of issues, the future of The Huffington Post among them.

The sale comes at a pivotal moment for The Huffington Post, which AOL acquired in 2011 for $315 million. The site was founded 10 years ago, and built its growth on relentless aggregation and search engine optimization. (It remains the top result for the query "what time is the Super Bowl?" for example.) In 2010 and 2011, it hired several well-regarded journalists and sought to expand its news output. In 2012, it won a Pulitzer Prize for national reporting.