Representatives of Yahoo and of AOL, a unit of Time Warner, declined to comment on the report. The word comes on the heels of rumors that first Microsoft, then a Google-Comcast partnership, were in discussions with AOL.

“When you’ve got multiple players going after a property, like anything, you get increased competition and people tend to bid higher,” said Rob Enderle, principal analyst at the Enderle Group and Gary Stein, an analyst at JupiterResearch, also agreed.

America OnLine had great success in business lately also by launch a new AOL.com portal - a move that was designed to help collect some of the “online ad dollars” going toward Google and other search rivals.

“It does certainly seem like everyone is interested in AOL these days, particularly because of its (large volume of) traffic,” said Stein. “There is no clear indication that AOL is even looking to sell, but now, all of a sudden, they are the most popular girl at the dance.”

America Online, or AOL for short, is a U.S.-based online service provider and Internet service provider that is owned by Time Warner. Based in Dulles, Virginia, a community in Loudoun County, Virginia, with regional headquarters installations in many cities around the world, it is by far the most successful proprietary online service, with more than 32 million subscribers at one point in the US, Canada, Germany, France, the United Kingdom, Latin America (declared bankrupt in 2004), and Japan. In early 2005, AOL Hong Kong stopped its service.

AOL allied with Time Warner resulting stock transaction worth about $160 billion.

Between the three competitors, Microsoft is the most suited candidate for AOL because MSN is designed using the AOL model and Yahoo is the most unsuited. That leaves Google that might be the third in a battle of two…