Do you AOL-Yahoo? Maybe you will, if they merge

by admin December 27, 2006 at 12:39 pm

AOL and Yahoo are destined to merge, or so said Merrill Lynch analyst Jessica Reif Cohen in a note entitled “Is 2007 the year AOL and Yahoo are in play?” that was sent to investors shortly before the Christmas holiday. Both companies have itches in need of much scratching. Yahoo’s problems have been quite visible as of late, as noted in the now infamous Peanut Butter Manifesto. To boil it down to an oversimplification that’s still technically true, Yahoo is feeling the heat from Google.

AOL, on the other hand, is feeling the heat from, well, the Internet. The marriage of Time Warner and AOL has always been tough to understand (unless you’re Steve Case), and Time Warner has flirted with the idea of selling AOL more than once (they’re reportedly thinking about it again, after deciding “no” last year). As of late, the company has been plagued by declining revenues from its search program, which makes sense given that the number of users heading to that portal appears to be dropping off. In the wild world of mergers and acquisitions, this means that AOL needs to toughen up or jump ship, and toughening up is often done with a few reps on the Acquisition Trainer 3000.

Full article: Ars Technica