Who says AOL is tanking? The Time Warner Company's properties are growing nicely, according to the company. AOL Money & Finance, News, Sports, Health, Food, Music, Games and Moviefone hit an all-time high in unique visitors and traffic in March, gaining 35% in page views and 11% in unique visitors to 56 million. Overall, these properties have seen six consecutive months of growth in uniques and page views. AOL attributed the good news to a year-long rebranding and redesigning effort. Many of the programming sites have actually dropped the AOL brand. Meanwhile, comScore says AIM, MapQuest, AOL Music, AOL …

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has said the company is prepared to walk away from its $44.6 billion bid for Yahoo, but BusinessWeek thinks Ballmer is bluffing. The business journal says Microsoft needs Yahoo, as first quarter results again exposed the persistent downward trend in the software giant's online services division. As Brent Thill, Citigroup's director of software research says, "it wasn't a spectacular quarter by any means," especially in online services, where losses widened to $228 million. The division, which relies almost exclusively on online advertising, went a further $43 million into the red from a year ago, although …

Google and Yahoo claim they notified The Department of Justice about their two-week search test, but nevertheless, the DoJ is investigating the trial's antitrust implications. Why? Because the companies consider this test a prelude to a larger search advertising deal, one that many critics think would have an impossible time passing regulatory scrutiny. It appears they would be right, too, judging by how quickly authorities pounced on the two-week test. One source tells Reuters that some of the government's concern focused on a telephone call from Google chief Eric Schmidt to Yahoo founder and CEO Jerry Yang to offer …

Thanks to the strong sale of its Macintosh computers, which rose 51%, Apple turned in strong first-quarter earnings of 37% on Wednesday. Meanwhile, sales of its iPod are definitely slowing, while sales of its iPhone were described by one analyst as "soft." Nevertheless, Apple, which sold just 1.7 million iPhones in the quarter, maintains its plan to sell 10 million units this year. The lofty prediction all but confirms that the 3G iPhone will be available sometime later this year. "Apple might as well put out a press release," according to Forbes, which notes the thinly veiled attempts to …

Facebook's developer platform is barely 11 months old, but the burgeoning developer ecosystem it's created faces many challenges ahead, a group of developers said at the Web 2.0 Expo on Wednesday. For starters, there's the question of money: How big is the Facebook platform pie? How big can it get? One exec estimated that more than $100 million would be made in 2008, while others said revenues would be as low as $10-35 million. All the panelists agreed that Facebook CPMs are "miserably low," averaging maybe 15 cents. Approximately 80% of the platform's revenue comes from advertising, but developers are …

Many Microsoft employees are against a Yahoo acquisition, and while concerns might not be enough to force the software giant to reconsider its $45 billion bid, CEO Steve Ballmer has indicated that Microsoft could walk away from the deal if Yahoo decides it's unwilling to come to the bargaining table. Speaking in Milan on Wednesday, Ballmer reiterated that $44.6 billion "is a lot of money," and that Microsoft, with no plans to raise the offer, is "prepared to move forward alone without Yahoo". Meanwhile, Microsoft's Saturday deadline to accept the current offer is fast approaching. As such, the software …

It's not just Microsoft employees who are worried about the possible ramifications of a Yahoo union. The Yahoo bid has single-handedly dragged down Microsoft's stock. The software giant has seen shares fall 3.5% since CEO Steve Ballmer's $44.6 billion offer to buy the company on Jan. 31. Ken Smith, director of technology investment at Munder Capital Management says Yahoo's repeated rejections have shifted investor attention away from Microsoft's strengths. "They need to quit fooling around and get the deal done," Smith said, adding that "the fundamentals of Microsoft's business are tremendous, but this has really capped the stock." As …