Sept 9, 2011
AOL Chief Executive Tim Armstrong has reportedly approached private equity firms to gauge interest in a deal with Yahoo that would place Armstrong as the head of the combined company, according to a Bloomberg report.
CNBC later reported that a source close to Yahoo said the company had no interest in a deal with AOL.
AOL shares closed down 5.3 percent at $14.72 while Yahoo inched up 0.3 pct to $14.48.
Both former tech powerhouses have fallen on tough times and Reuters.com columnist John C. Abell says: “It’s impossible to know if anything short of IBM-like reinvention could have altered the course of these two companies so that the music playing now would still be more jazz than dirge.”
In other AOL-related news, Xconomy blogger Wade Roush argues that the “explosion of criticism” over TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington’s plans to create a startup seed fund has finally convinced Armstrong that “yoking a formal venture fund to a journalistic operation would make the (real or perceived) conflicts wholly unmanageable.”
Apple Inc scored a symbolic legal victory in efforts to keep its lead spot in the tablet computer market when a German court upheld a ban barring Samsung’s local unit from selling its Galaxy 10.1 tablets in Europe’s biggest economy.
A new iPhone application aims to make social networking truly social, with the help of geo-location technology.
Evernote, which makes a popular app for taking notes and storing data on tablets, phones and personal computers, is considering filing for an initial public offering by the end of next year, its chief executive told Reuters on Friday.
