Reuters has anonymous sources that say things are heating up at Time Warner about dealing AOL as their August 1 shareholders meeting approaches. The gossip splits on either an outright sale to Microsoft or Yahoo showing shareholders how they can grow on their own without Microsoft by merging in some way with AOL.
Funny, once upon a time in bubbleland, there was this giant called AOL that had huge audience and all these community features. Microsoft launched MSN to battle, and the little old handmade directory called Yahoo grew into a mega aggregator and rounded out the big three online. Then this site called Google fragmented the branded portals with super search that made millions of teeny tiny sites easier to find. Once they were easy to find, Google built a new business selling cheap tiny turnkey ads on them. Now the big three are all trying to get together somehow.
Funny strange, not funny “ha, ha.”
