There were two merger stories in the last week, the first was Microsofts univited bid to buy Yahoo! which is looking increasingly unlikely to happen, with a rejection expected later today. The second was an extremely speculative guess that eBay might buy AOL.
Today The Times reports that Yahoo! are reopening talks to merge with AOL, currently owned by Time Warner. This would protect Yahoo! from the unwelcome attentions of Microsoft, and surprisingly could be supported by Google. One might wonder why Google is so interested in protecting their closest rival, but a strong Yahoo! is more attractive to them than an even stronger Microsoft/Yahoo! partnership. Google own a 5% share in AOL.
