Via TW, Fortune reports that Yahoo may be resuming talks with AOL about an acquisition as a play against rival Google.
“FORTUNE has learned from multiple sources that Yahoo! recently approached Time Warner (parent of FORTUNE’s publisher) about buying America Online – essentially trying to jump-start talks that broke down a year ago. A source close to Yahoo disputes that Yahoo approached Time Warner and says that there are no active conversations between the two companies.”
The story also offers speculation about what Yahoo’s next moves might be:
- Sell to Microsoft
- Merge with eBay
- Stay the course
Personally, my vote would be “stay the course”. I don’t look at Google and Yahoo as an apples to apples comparison myself. I think it’s the same for most users too. If I had time, I would find the statistics that cite most users are not loyal to one search engine – they use different search engines for different functions.
Some of the questions that come to mind with this article are, what will the impact of Yahoo’s new PPC platorm Panama be? Will it be enough to grab enough paid search market share to revive Yahoo stock?
I’m looking forward to seeing what Yahoo offers in response to this bit of speculative reporting.