What's taking the Yahoo-AOL merger so long to materialize? As Kara Swisher points out, two massive obstacles are now out of the way -- the breakdown of the Yahoo-Google deal and Time Warner's third
quarter earnings (both of which were bad news for the respective companies) -- so now the pair should finally be ready to cut a deal, right? Well, according to Swisher, "the deal might take another
semester to come together (read: Spring 2009), not being signed until the end of the year, if it happens at all."
So what's holding back a deal this time? Swisher's sources claim "there are
still price issues," especially considering Yahoo's volatile share price, "as well as worries about integration." As an unnamed insider from one of the companies concedes, "Neither of us moves as
quickly as we need to, which got us into the trouble in the first place and is kind of how this is playing out too."
Also, Swisher uncovers that Yahoo and AOL's investment bankers, in their
merger talks, are speaking in code, using the college institutions Yale University and Amherst College instead of the companies' real names.
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