Next year will mark the 15th anniversary of the AOL-Time Warner merger, a deal infamous for destroying shareholder value.

But 15 years is also a long time and enough for many of the lessons from the debacle to be overwhelmed by a genuine belief that this time will be different. And as it becomes more likely that some tech company will shack up with some media company, my bet is that Yahoo will buy CNN. The result, in all likelihood, wouldn’t be pretty, but at this point in the tech cycle, it may be inevitable.