Business

Yahoo!’s Mayer, AOL’s Armstrong huddle at Sun Valley

SUN VALLEY, Idaho — Yahoo! CEO Marissa Mayer might be looking to strike some deals with AOL — or maybe she was just reminiscing with an old pal.

Either way, tongues were wagging at the Allen & Co. mogulfest Thursday night when the tech exec had a long private chat with AOL Chief Executive Tim Armstrong at the Duchin bar.

Mayer, 39, and Armstrong, 42, sat across from each other at one of the bar’s round tables near the door, where a gaggle of reporters could see them nodding their heads and chatting.

The two former Google executives — she worked in search and maps for more than a decade and he worked in ad sales and marketing — nearly closed down the bar. They left shortly before midnight along with Mayer’s husband, Zachary Bogue.

A Yahoo!-AOL merger has been rumored for years, including reports in 2010 that Armstrong talked with then-Yahoo! CEO Carol Bartz.

Then, as now, a merger would give them a larger slice of the online ad pie. Yahoo! accounts for 5.8 percent of US digital spending. AOL makes up 2.3 percent, according to eMarketer.

AOL owns dozens of content sites, including the Huffington Post, Engadget and TechCrunch. Mayer, meanwhile, has been investing in media assets, including launching online magazines and hiring Katie Couric as global news anchor. But her efforts have shown modest results, with display ad sales rising just 2 percent in 2013.


In light of the Yahoo!-AOL speculation, The Post caught up with Eric Jackson, the hedgie who pressed for a merger of the companies earlier this year.

The founder of Ironfire Capital said he’s skeptical that a deal would happen, even though he believes it makes good business sense. The problem: AOL just isn’t cool enough for Mayer.

“I think she’s a person who cares very much what the Silicon Valley elite are saying to her at parties about what’s cool and what’s not cool,” Jackson said. “Nobody thinks AOL is cool.”

He said Mayer, who posed for Vogue, is “more inclined” to buy a hot property like Pinterest or Yelp.


Former Mayor Michael Bloomberg told the crowd at Sun Valley that he refuses to blast his successor Bill de Blasio in front of them — or anyone else for that matter.

Bloomberg made the remarks during an interview on Friday with TV correspondent Willow Bay, who is the wife of Disney chief Bob Iger.

When asked whether he thinks de Blasio is doing a good job, Bloomberg wouldn’t answer the question, according to an attendee at the closely guarded session.

Bloomberg noted that his predecessor Rudy Giuliani was kind enough not to criticize him when he took office, and he would extend the same courtesy to de Blasio.


Secretary of State John Kerry sure wants to talk to titans — even from Afghanistan.

Despite having to skip Sun Valley for a quick trip to Afghanistan to deal with its messy election, conference attendees expect to hear from him. Indeed, the organizers tried to patch him in via teleconference on Friday but the connection was bad. They promised to try again Saturday.

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie didn’t take to the podium, though he told The Post he was replacing a speaker.


Dan Gilbert, the owner of the NBA’s Cleveland Cavaliers, was invited to Sun Valley but was nowhere to be seen on Friday when the big news broke about a LeBron James homecoming.

“I haven’t seen him in awhile,” said former New York Knicks player Bill Bradley, who is now a managing director at Allen & Co.