According to Mediapost, Merril Lynch has released a report stating that Google's significant cornering of the market coupled with several other trends could result in industry consolidation. AOL's merger with Yahoo! can be one of the repercussions. However, a merger with Microsoft is not completely ruled out.

The report conclusively rules out merger with any of the traditional media companies, terming the merger with Times Warner "Disastrous." AOL, in the meanwhile, has improved upon its stats for a more favorable merger. For the first time in four years the memberships have not fallen below the last year's average.  While a merger with Yahoo! would definitely be ups for AOL, the question is would Yahoo! be equally enthusiastic.

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