Yahaol? the saga continues

The saga of who will buy/merge with Yahoo continues with the announcement they are in talks with AOL about a potential merger to take on the digital world.  It is difficult to see how two very similar operations could effectively pull together to take on the market as is pointed out by Mashable.  They are both a web portal offering search functionality, display advertising and personal email so what a merger would achieve is slightly confusing unless the both of them are willing to merge their systems for the greater good of taking on Google and Microsoft in their respective strong holds.  The only benefit I could see is if by merging their two media selling/buying operations they could aim to offer the advertiser greater reach through one point of call but this is a tenuous link at best.  Maybe they have something else up their sleeve whcih could surpries us all but for me there is little benefit in such a merger.