Carl Icahn, John Chapple, and Frank Biondi had their first meeting as new Yahoo! Board members this past Monday.  What happened after the meeting?  A rumor that Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ:YHOO) may buy AOL from Time Warner Inc. (NYSE:TWX) for $5-$8 billion.  This time Yahoo! propositions “are more serious than has been reported” according to AllThingsD.

Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes stated that the future of AOL may be decided soon.  While the rumor is that Yahoo! is offering $5-$8 billion, Time Warner seems to be pushing for $10 billion.  This isn’t the first time this year that Yahoo! was forced to play the negotiation game.

Yahoo! did this same dance with Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) in February.  Yahoo! wanted over $44.6 billion to be acquired by the software giant, which ended the talks between them a couple of months ago.  AllThingsD also pointed out that AOL doesn’t really have the best bargaining chips when it comes to make a deal happen.  AOL has been bouncing around with Compuserve, Netscape, and Time Warner and the best things have not come out of those deals.

To make things even more interesting Carl Icahn went on CNBC’s Fast Money on Friday, September 19 and stated that he thinks if Yahoo! doesn’t do something with Microsoft, Google will kill them.  Both Yahoo! and AOL are in a vulnerable position.  This is also why Yahoo! has enlisted Bain & Company to help them cut costs.

Below is the e-mail that Jerry Yang about the hiring of Bain:

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