Yahoo Unlikely to Buy AOL

Remember that whole Yahoo-May-Buy-AOL thing? It never looked all that likely to us to begin with, and now it’s even less so. Reuters reports that Yahoo is unlikely to get into a bidding war over AOL with Microsoft because if Microsoft gets in the way, Yahoo could instead renew talks over News Corp‘s Web properties, a person with knowledge of the plans said:

“Yahoo, seeking to shape an independent growth strategy after rebuffing Microsoft’s bid to take it over, has kept in contact with News Corp,” the source said in the report; the same source indicated that discussions with Time Warner about AOL appeared further along. But Rupert Murdoch, head of News Corp, said recently that a deal between his company—which owns the popular MySpace online social network—and Yahoo was “very unlikely.” All of this adds up to a net change of zero, in other words.

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