Microsoft, Yahoo! circling AOL for acquisition

Stephen Withers
Thursday, 17 July 2008 09:03

IT Industry - Strategy

Both companies also could benefit by picking up AOL's recently acquired Bebo social network - particular popular among young Internet users - but Bebo could be especially attractive to Microsoft, which currently lacks a social network.

Microsoft has been progressively acquiring companies such as Navic and AdECN in order to become a strong player on the supply side of online advertising, but it would benefit from more opportunities to deliver ads, and the acquisition of AOL, Yahoo! or both would help in that respect.

Given that the US government is already examining an advertising deal between Yahoo! and Google (which is thought to have been struck largely as a defensive ploy against Microsoft's bid for Yahoo!), so there is no guarantee that a Microsoft-AOL or Yahoo!-AOL deal would be allowed to proceed.

AOL is no stranger to controversy. In 2006, it publicly released search logs covering more than 600,000 users. Although attempts had been made to anonymise the data, privacy advocates said in some cases patterns of search terms could be used to identify the user.

AOL's 2000 acquisition of Time Warner for $US164 billion was regarded as the high water mark of the dot-com boom. AOL Time Warner was renamed Time Warner in 2003, following a dramatic loss of value in the tech crunch. The company first mooted plans to sell the AOL division in late 2007.

Icahn has also been involved in events at Time Warner. In 2006 he led a group that proposed the breakup of Time Warner into four companies, just as he recently advocated splitting Yahoo! in two. His group agreed not to contest board seats when Time Warner agreed to a $US20 billion stock buyback and other measures.

Could Microsoft afford to buy Yahoo! and AOL? Please read on.