Late news today from Cnet has
insiders denying rumors that AOL Time Warner is bidding on Red Hat Linux.

I hope it’s true, since this is a match that doesn’t seem to make any sense, to either company.

But this is the type of story that the mainstream media — and even the tech business press — tends to pick up on, but which makes no sense with a little analysis. Over on News.com, Joe Wilcox wrote:

“The AOL service currently is available only for Windows and the Macintosh, although the Netscape browser supports Linux. ”

And that’s no accident. AOL didn’t merely overlook the Linux platform; it recognizes that there’s virtually no overlap between the technically savvy users who run Linux and the audience for America Online.

Wilcox continues:

“On the surface, competing with Microsoft in the operating system market would seem to make sense, especially as AOL Time Warner increasingly knocks heads with the software giant in the market for Web services leveraged off the desktop.”

No, it doesn’t. Here’s one lesson to take from the last two years of companies going bust, right up to the current unravelling of Enron: no one company can be all things to all people. AOL is still digesting Time Warner and learning how to grow from a super online service to the world’s largest media company. Nothing in that says it needs to learn how to develop desktop software for the masses, or sell software services through corporate channels.

If I’m right and the merger makes no sense, and if Cnet’s sources are to be believed, that leaves one big question: who started the story that the Washington Post bit on: AOL wanting to rattle Microsoft’s chain? Red Hat gauging its place in the market? Or a third-party just having some fun?