Where Yahoo's AOL Idea Might've Come From

Just a hunch here, since board members aren't talking. But the structure of the allegedly proposed deal between Yahoo and AOL looks suspiciously like...the deal about to close merging videogame company Activision with Vivendi's game unit.

Just last month, I interviewed Activision CEO Bobby Kotick for Portfolio magazine. Kotick is on Yahoo's board. He talked about how Vivendi merged the games division into Activision, got a 25% stake in the merged company, but left control with Activision's management.

Then I read in today's coverage about the proposed Yahoo-AOL deal. Er, well, alleged deal, since it's all still rumors and innuendo that could be designed to make Microsoft pay more for Yahoo.

As Reuters writes:

Yahoo's talks with Time Warner are getting near to a deal that would fold AOL's business, excluding its legacy dial-up Internet access operations, into a combined Yahoo company, a person familiar with the talks said. Such a deal would value AOL at $10 billion, the person said.

Yahoo would receive cash from Time Warner in exchange for 20 percent of a combined Yahoo-AOL, the source said. Other sources confirmed the outlines of the talks but provided no further details.

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