According to a story at The Wall Street Journal, Yahoo and AOL are close a deal that would combine their Internet operations and likely thwart Microsoft’s acquisition attempt of Yahoo.
The deal will reportedly have AOL’s parent, Time Warner, folding AOL into Yahoo and making a cash investment in exchange for roughly 20% of the combined entity. Yahoo would then use cash from Time Warner as well as additional funds to buy back several billions worth of its own stock.
Microsoft isn’t sitting still and is apparently in talk with Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. to jointly acquire Yahoo.
News Corp. has been engaged in their own talks with Yahoo about a possible partnership and according to “people close to the companies” talks have stalled.
[Via WSJ]
Filed under: tech | Tagged: acquisition, aol, merger, microsoft, murdoch, newscorp, news_corp, tech, timewarner, yahoo
