For users, AOL-Yahoo combo likely wouldn't change much

USA TODAY, April, 2008 by Jefferson Graham

What might a possible AOL-Yahoo combination look like?

Probably not that different than the companies look separately.

Yahoo and AOL are the No.1 and No.3 providers of e-mail services in the United States, and closing down one over the other is unlikely to happen, says Ellen Siminoff, chairman of online advertising firm Efficient Frontier. "People would hate having their e-mail addresses changed."

A combined Yahoo/AOL could make their instant-messaging programs interoperable -- letting users of Yahoo communicate with AIM users and vice versa, something they can't do now, says Greg Sterling, an analyst at Sterling Market Intelligence.

(Yahoo Messenger and Windows Live Messenger users can communicate now. AOL's AIM opted not to...