Microsoft potential buyout of Yahoo

Marketwatch reports that rumors are flying this morning about a potential takeover of Yahoo by Microsoft. Talks have become more formalized as Microsoft intends to be more competitive in their mergers & acquisitions after they failed to nab the Internet Advertisting giant Doubleclick before Google purchased the company for 3.1 billion dollars recently.

If Microsoft were to takeover Yahoo, a more interesting possibility might play out…. a union between Microsoft and Apple.  What, you say?   The two rivals working together? Did we not already see this dramatic story played out during their partnership of 1997? Not this way we didn’t. 

This past January, when Steve Jobs unveiled the iPhone he also announced partnerships with Yahoo and Cingular in the development of the new Apple mobile communications product. 

Could this man be the next CEO of Yahoo?

Yahoo’s IMAP mail pushing protocol was going to be the base of the email service component on the new phone. A great deal of Apple’s future is at stake with the iPhone. It is the device whose speculation has driven their stock price past $100 for the first time in company history, and it begs the question, how would a Microsoft ran Yahoo with Steve Ballmer at CEO helm feel about the partnership on the iPhone, a device that he once told a USA Today reporter had,      “…no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share. No chance. It’s a $500 subsidized item.”