AOL (NYSE: TWX) CEO Randy Falco spoke today at IAB’s annual conference, and echoed what the official and unofficial thinking within Time Warner is at this point: “I’m hoping the two of them will beat each other’s brains out over search and leave the display market to us,” he said. This is what Jeff Bewkes’ line of thinking is on Microsoft’s (NSDQ: MSFT) bid for Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO). Also, he thinks the deal is a mistake, “But I think Napoleon said never interrupt your enemy when they’re in the middle of making a mistake.”

And then Falco had a rare fire-in-the-belly moment: “Microsoft and Google (NSDQ: GOOG) can ignore us and leave us off of charts if they want, but they do that at their own peril,” referring to AOL’s advertising assets with Platform-A.

Interestingly, Falco said that AOL is not all that interested in creating an ad exchange, believing it can commoditize inventory, a concern of publishers….this should be a small blow to startups in this space who would have considered AOL as an exit option.