Fortune claims Yahoo! has tried to buy AOL from Time Warner

Posted Oct 30th 2006 12:35PM by Jon Ogg
Filed under: Deals, Rumors, Magazines, Internet, Yahoo! (YHOO), Time Warner (TWX)

Overshadowed by Google Inc.(NASDAQ:GOOG), Yahoo! CEO Terry Semel needs to make a move. Now he's flirting with AOL, Fortune reports. This story is dated October 28, 2006

Fortune claims it has learned from multiple sources that Yahoo! recently approached Time Warner Inc. (NYSE:TWX) (parent of both Fortune's publisher and AOL) about buying AOL. It notes that Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ:YHOO) is trying to jump-start talks that broke down a year ago. The article cites a contact close to Yahoo! that says Yahoo! approached Time Warner and says that there are no active conversations between the two companies.

If there are talks or not, the article lays out how a merger of Yahoo! and AOL would be a win for Semel as he is under pressure now. Last year Google outbid Yahoo and swooped in to become AOL's exclusive Internet search provider. Google also picked up a 5% stake in AOL for $1 billion as part of the deal. Oddly enough, the article states that if Semel can't acquire AOL that Yahoo! should itself consider selling the company.

Tags: AOL, Google, Time Warner, TimeWarner, TWX, Yahoo

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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

10-30-2006 @ 1:32PM

Gary E. Sattler said...

If I had to field an optimistic guess, I would say that AOL is holding out in anticipation of the unification of Amazon, Wagglepop, HiBidder and Bidville in preparation of the operating association between those unified groups, Nextel and an undisclosed Voip provider.

But that's just an optimistic guess.

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