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After a ballyhooed merger between AOL and Time Warner six years ago that has, to put it kindly, yielded mixed results at best
People on Wall Street love to keep speculating about AOL's future within the Time Warner organization.
Some Wall Street analysts think Time Warner COO Jeff Bewkes, who could succeed CEO Dick Parsons in 2008, is open to the idea of spinning off AOL.
Shares of Time Warner have surged during the past month as analysts have speculated about an AOL spinoff or merger. But other media stocks have rallied too, as has the broader market.
In the past few weeks, analysts at both UBS and Bear Stearns have suggested that Time Warner could either spin off a portion of AOL, a similar strategy to what Time Warner has done with its cable subsidiary Time Warner Cable, or merge it with another Internet giant.
Google, Yahoo!, Microsoft's MSN or IAC, the Web conglomerate run by Barry Diller that owns Ask.com, have been mentioned most often as likely candidates in a merger scenario. Google, in fact, bought a 5 percent stake in AOL in late 2005 for $1 billion.
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