Google is said to be interested in pitching in to buy Yahoo, but won't get too involved

Oct 24, 2011 13:01 GMT  ·  By
Plenty of people are thinking about buying Yahoo, but few are really interested
   Plenty of people are thinking about buying Yahoo, but few are really interested

Ever since the Yahoo board got rid of its, rather underperforming, CEO Carol Bartz earlier this fall, the rumors about its future have been all over the place. While Yahoo initially denied wanting to sell, this is one of the possible paths going forward.

And, while it seems that the companies most interested in Yahoo are private equity funds and similar firms, the much juicier rumors have been about big web companies that may want to buy Yahoo.

The Chinese Alibaba is an obvious choice, probably on top of the list, and there have been plenty of rumors around a possible buyout.

Alibaba CEO and founder Jack Ma said he is very interested in Yahoo. But any deal like this will likely be very complicated.

Aliababa is not the only one said to be interested, rumors surrounding Microsoft have popped up as well. Considering that Microsoft was about to buy Yahoo a few years back, it seems like a likely story, but it does not hold water today.

Still, the rumor mill keeps on churning, now we have another name on the list, Google, which is said to be discussing some sort of deal around Yahoo.

It's important to underline that neither Microsoft nor Google would be interested in anything more than getting a small piece of Yahoo, but mostly in helping those really interested in taking over, in exchange for a stronger tie going further.

Both Microsoft and Google would love to get deeper advertising deals with Yahoo. Google in particular would be very eager to get its ads on some Yahoo properties and grow in the display ad market.

Another big opportunity for Google would be to integrate Google+ with Yahoo. Facebook is currently the preferred social network at Yahoo. The site has some 700 million people using it each month, so the potential is big.

However, the chance of Google, or Microsoft for that matter, getting too involved with Yahoo are slim. Even if they really wanted to take over Yahoo or have a strong tie, the anti-trust issues, especially for Google, would make it not worth its while.