We're not quite ready to buy into the rumors that Yahoo! Inc. [
YHOO] board members are reaching out to Microsoft Corp. [
MSFT] to revive a possible search deal. The speculation appears to have started with fab rumor monger Kara Swisher on
Tuesday, but were buried in a post that mostly discusses a potential Yahoo! acquisition of AOL LLC.
As the "story" goes, with Yahoo!'s pending search partnership with Google Inc. [
GOOG] in jeopardy, some Yahoo! board members have used the
bat phone to call Redmond, Wash., about renewing talks on a search deal. But, as Silicon Alley Insider's Henry Blodget
points out, if the Google deal is a no-go, Yahoo! loses any leverage it may have once had with Microsoft, which means Microsoft won't be offering anywhere near what it may have been willing to pay before for the asset, particularly with the market's recent collapse.
And that's where the discussion begins to fall apart. Would Yahoo!, which was so unwilling to make a deal with Microsoft before, now be so desperate to hammer out a new agreement that it would take far less money for the search business today? No doubt, there are pressures on the company to do something, but this doesn't feel like the right time for Yahoo! to make that deal.
- David ShabelmanSee Oct. 28 post from All Things DigitalSee Oct. 29 post from All Things Digital
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D:
Calling me a "fab rumor monger" might seem cute, except that our site has broken most of the key stories in the Yahoo saga for more than a year now and has been accurate. From exec departures to Microsoft moves to a recent scoop in which our site had the exactly right number on Yahoo layoffs, while others were reporting double.
Just like our brethren at Dow Jones and the Wall Street Journal, where I covered the Web for a decade, we do reporting, David, we don't print rumors.
I would also point out that The Deal was stunningly wrong in a story recently saying Google had walked away from the Yahoo search ad deal--another story we have been aggressively reporting on early--and had to run another story correcting the reporting (after our site set the record straight, I might add).
Maybe I should stoop to calling The Deal a bad rumor monger?