When it comes to Yahoo, oftentimes, I feel like a mad man ranting in the dark. And the rumor of Yahoo swapping 25% of its equity in exchange for ownership of MySpace only reinforces that view. This supposed transaction baffles me.

Yahoo doesn't need a larger audience. Sure, it wants one, but that's not what it's problem is. It's problem is that it can't monetize all of the traffic it already garners across its huge network as effectively as others do.

MySpace only addresses something Yahoo wants, not something the company needs. The idea that Yahoo would take control of the social network and outsource its monetization to Google is ludicrous.

The source of this report is the Times of London. As someone who spent a few years in London that found more truth in the funnies than in the business sections of newspapers, I think there is just as much chance that the supposed negotiations between Yahoo and News Corp. are fact as they are a fiction. Yahoo shareholders better hope they are the latter.

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Russell Shaw

Tags: yahoo, yhoo, google, goog, news+corp, nws.