Best & Worst: Synergy, like beauty, is a buzzword best described by the beholder

This post is written as part of AOL Money & Finance's Best & Worst 2006. Cast your vote for the most overused buzzword.

On election night, CNN had a gaggle of pundits and bloggers opining about the Democratic takeover of the U.S. House and Senate. Among the throng was a journalist from Newsweek. That was amazing. On election night, a time when CNN gets big ratings, the Time Warner (NYSE:TWX)-owned network turned to someone who works for a publication that is a fierce rival of its own Time magazine. It makes one wonder, whatever happened to corporate synergies?

Executives repeated that phrase ad nauseam during the go-go 90s. I always got the impression that big investors took these estimates with a grain -- make that a truckload -- of salt. Synergy was the main selling point of the Time Warner-AOL merger. Then, the word took off in various spellings, including the utility Cinergy, now a part of Duke Energy (NYSE:DUK). There's Corporate Synergies, a benefits consulting company based in New Jersey, and Idaho-based Provider Synergies, which manages company spending on drugs.

The catch phrase resurfaced this year when General Motors Corporation (NYSE:GM) mulled over an alliance with Renault SA and Nissan Motor Corp. Bloomberg News reported that "GM had figured an alliance would cut its purchasing costs by $1 billion to $2 billion; the Renault estimate was much higher, a person familiar with the talks said."

US Airways (NYSE:LCC) estimated that it could get "actual savings" of $1.65 billion over two years by taking over rival Delta Air Lines, Inc. Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) pointed out in its press release announcing the YouTube deal that the video sharing site "will operate independently to preserve its successful brand and passionate community." It will be interesting to see if everyone remains a happy Google family in the coming years.

Jonathan Berr is the editor of http://www.desperateinvestors.com.