Perhaps you've heard the buzz, but if not there's a rumor going around right now that mobile communicator rivals Palm and Research In Motion are set to announce a merger of equals as early as this very Thursday. But before you get your panties in a twist about the seemingly possibilities of TreoBerries or BlackTreos (no, not those black Treos), you should trace the breadcrumb trail from the rumor's prominent placement on CNET all the way back to an anonymous LiveJournal prominently featuring the slogan "Right now I am big on PALM stock, because the Treo is gonna be huge.." Of course, we'd never rule anything out only because it came from an anonymous source, but we're definitely suspicious. The author of the LJ, titled Covert Stock Operations, points out that Palm would go through with the deal because RIM can offer them "a great investor relations department," "acceleration of market dominance," and a lot of other fluffy reasons; apparently it's in RIM's best interest to buy Palm because they're a primary mobile communicator competitor who are beginning to support Microsoft's entry into the push email space, and their hardware and software offerings would round one anothers' out, complimenting and improving their total respective product portfolios. Honestly, we see RIM and Palm as two disparate, headstrong companies with a lot less incentive to merge with anyone -- let alone with one another -- given the goings on of the last few months. RIM's emerged from the fog of the NTP case and Palm's 2006 handset offerings are gaining in momentum; whereas there's no way we can assure you the two won't be merging, um, this week, we can definitely say Occam's razor would dictate the anonymous Palm stock pimping blog might have more to gain from the rumor than either of these companies probably would in actually merging.

[Via CNET]