Microsoft Yahoo Talks Getting Hotter

According to BoomTown, Microsoft and Yahoo are now “hot and heavy” in talks about a search and advertising partnership. Yahoo is said to be playing it a bit cooler than Microsoft who is aggressively pursuing opportunities to not take further losses in the search market. Depending on how Yahoo’s numbers look tomorrow, it is unsure if any official news will come out of Yahoo regarding a search deal. Rest assured, if numbers are in the gutter, investors will want to know the reality of the partnership talks, which analysts are claiming would save Yahoo in excess of $1.3B a year.
Microsoft executives including an M&A and strategy exec, Charles Songhurst, and digital head (and also former Yahoo employee) Qi Lu, have been seen in Silicon Valley recently talking with Yahoo execs. Lu was a top search executive at Yahoo before jumping ship to Microsoft. He is said to be mostly in charge of mediating talks between the two giants. This deal WILL happen in 2009.