Once again, scrappy Tim Arango of the New York Post’s even scrappier business pages scoops the world. Today he reports news of advanced talks between Microsoft and Time-Warner wherein MS will acquire part of AOL and merge it into MSN. Even The Times’s star M&A reporter Andrew Ross Sorkin gives credit (and a hyperlink to The Post!) where credit was due in his DealBook electronic newsletter. It’s ironic how just yesterday I pondered how Microsoft and Yahoo could ever hope to compete for the minds, eyeballs and wallets of consumers with the relentless news and innovation emanating from Google. I guess digging deep into their corporate pockets is one way, though Google just deepened its pocket yesterday with a 4.1 billion cash infusion. Let’s watch the AOL MSN story unfold over the next few days…big time.