Microsoft eyeing deal to buy Yahoo

Microsoft Corp. is resuming its pursuit of search engine operator Yahoo Inc. that could help it better compete with Web search leader Google Inc., published reports said Friday.

Yahoo shares surged more than 17 percent in premarket trading.

The New York Post reported Friday that Microsoft has asked Yahoo to enter formal negotiations for an acquisition that could be worth $50 billion. Yahoo's market capitalization was about $38 billion on Thursday.

The Wall Street Journal said executives of the two companies are looking at a merger or some other kind of matchup and said the talks appear to be early-stage discussions. It said the companies explored the idea of combining last year but the talks led nowhere.

[Silver Bull3t]

You will be assimilated
we will add your genetic diversity to our own
resistance is futile

[kewlkat007]

MS's smartest and biggest threat is Google, so I don't doubt this information. Yahoo has re-energized it's search and marketing services so a Merge is not out of the question,. I'm not sure about a buy-out though.

[eques judicii]

micro-hoo?
ya soft!

[gta_cb]

funny, i like the ya soft one better, although IF MS buys yahoo, i doubt they will put there bit of name last.

[Counter_ACT]

Microsoft wont beat google. :/

[warfed]

I'll bet Google will come in and buy just to piss MS off :D besides MS couldn't even outbid Google on DoubleClick it was sold for 3.1 billion

[FordGTGuy]

3.1 billion i'm sure another 50 billion to buy Yahoo isn't to much for them as long as they see it worth it. Microsoft has enough money to buy just about any other software company they want.

[Neutral Gamer]

Wow, after Google stole Microsoft's thunder over the last few years, they've tried various things to try and get ahead in the web industry. But this is one strategy that might actually make a considerable difference. Yahoo is a pretty damn popular site, it used to be my home page for years and they have recently given it a good makeover. I'd be very interested to see what the two of them together could come up with.

Whether you like Microsoft or not, you should all be happy that there are companies out there who are willing to and have the money to be able to compete with Google. There's been a lot of talk over the last year or so about how Google has got too big and the whole monopoly power accusations come into play (just like Microsoft in a way).

This'll be a good way of keeping the competition in the indutry alive which can only be good news for us consumers as we'll hopefully end up with better quality products as a result.

[eques judicii]

i agree google is getting huge... they keep buying up smaller companies to expand their advertising base