Does a Yahoo–AOL Merger Make Sense? - The New Yorker

tbd if the Google alumni club member CEOs of Yahoo and AOL can find a mutually acceptable deal, however

"There are legitimate reasons for Yahoo to consider buying AOL, though, ones related to how their operations have diverged over the past several years. While Yahoo has struggled to keep up with new advertising trends, AOL has invested in them aggressively; in August, AOL said that its advertising revenue had risen twenty per cent in its most recent quarter, thanks in part to programmatic ads. “We want to be at the center of the mechanization of the global advertising business,” Armstrong said. Smith, of Starboard, appears to want Yahoo to have access to the better ad technologies that AOL is using, and he also said that a combined company could cut costs by getting rid of overlap."

Does a Yahoo–AOL Merger Make Sense? - The New Yorker