If you have not heard it by now, either you are so out of touch with the web world (which I doubt if you read this blog) or you have been so busy with meetings all day, that you have not had a chance to check your RSS readers. I had the pleasure of first reading it this morning, but Microsoft is back in negotiations with Yahoo for a merger/acquisition for a rumored $50 billion (yep, that’s right). Every major news outlet has picked up on this by now, and it is definitely the talk of many offices nationwide. What will come of this, only time will tell.

For me, the interesting piece that has not seemed to get that much attention, at least not by the major Web blogs (Mashable, TechCrunch, VentureBeat, GigaOm, Valleywag and the list goes on, sorry if I missed you), is the little piece that ran through AP on AOL. I came across this article on washingtonpost.com, but I know that the NYTimes ran it as well. It was a summary of an interview that Dick Parsons (CEO of TimeWarner) did about the future of AOL. He stated that “several private-equity firms have approached him about buying AOL.” He went on to say that he would “never categorically rule out anything” when asked about selling off AOL. This is a complete shift in stance from about 6 to 8 months ago when he was asked a similar question and he said that they (TimeWarner) had no interest in selling AOL.

So , I wonder, what is it going to be?