It has all the trappings of a Harlequin romance: rich older guy woos a girl who hasn't drawn much attention, girl becomes more attractive and attracts more suitors, a new young richer guy vies for her affections, girl calls older guy and tells him he can have the ring back because, well, she's found true love.
criticized those rampant chatterings during a trip to Hong Kong. "It's market rumors, and I can't curb market rumors," Parsons said
In short order, Yahoo's participation in the overtures for a piece of AOL came to an abrupt halt in early November. CEO Terry Semel had met with Parsons in New York around Halloween to discuss the possibility of a deal.
"After we learned what their proposed deal terms were we passed and we've never looked back," a Yahoo spokesperson said. Cringely wrote a column in mid-November that discussed Microsoft's year-long stop and go efforts would payoff when reports began to emerge that deal would be announced before Christmas
But wait!!! A few hours later the story changed, leaving the door open for Google to charge past Microsoft and win the day. Ten long days passed. Then it happened. Parsons gave Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer the awful news: AOL's demand that they have the opportunity to place graphical advertising on the Google search results pages, could be related.
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