AOL Hires Advisers for Yahoo Deal

By Richard Gibson
Nov 8 2010

AOL stunned the tech world today when they announced that they have hired financial advisers to give them options about a possible partnership with Yahoo.

This move increased the share prices for both companies soon after the announcement was made, and increased hopes that someone would buy Yahoo.

AOL has said that this would not be a typical buyout move on their part. They are looking for options that would combine the might of the two companies so that they would become more competitive in the market. Both companies have seen a rapidly declining market share in the past decade.

AOL was once the most powerful internet service provider on the web. They managed hundreds of millions of users on a daily basis and were on top of the world for a while. When broadband internet hit the scene and increased competition started popping up AOL lost much of its market share to the competitors.

Yahoo is very similar to AOL in many respects. Once a powerful search engine company, they have been moved to the bottom of the heap by companies like Google and Bing. However, they recently moved all of their search operations over to Bing.

Analysts have said that a partnership between AOL and Yahoo could change the scope of the internet. With their combined knowledge they may be able to retake some of the market share that they have lost.

AOL has not formally approached Yahoo with a proposal nor are the two companies engaged in talks at this time.