14 DAY TRIAL // After failing to make it as a couple to the search engine and online advertising altar in 2008, the Yahoo and Microsoft marriage talks have been rekindled, Yahoo Chief Executive Officer Carol Bartz confirmed while doing an on-stage interview at the D: All Things Digital conference. There's no word on how advanced the negotiations between the two companies are at this point in time, or even if there are negotiations at all. Bartz admitted that she was indeed talking to Microsoft, but the fact of the matter is that nothing much appears to have been said so far, with the Yahoo CEO revealing that the level of the talks was up to just "Yeah, a little bit."
Bartz took the CEO position from Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang in mid-January 2009. Under Yang's leadership Yahoo turned down Microsoft's unsolicited acquisition bid of $31 per share made on February 1, 2008. At that time, the Redmond company was willing to pay no less than $44.6 billion in cash and stock for Yahoo in order to close the gap separating it from Google on the search engine and online advertising markets. By July 2008, Microsoft had completely retired its initial offer for Yahoo, indicating that it was looking to grow its search engine organically instead.
Bartz did indicate that she was ready to sell Yahoo Search to Microsoft. No figures were revealed, however; Yahoo's CEO mentioned that Microsoft would need nothing short of boatloads of money in order to get its hands on Yahoo Search. And not just boatloads of money, but also the “right technology,” in addition to providing Yahoo with the “right data.”
Microsoft is scheduled to unveil the results of the organic evolution of its search engine today, at the same event. The Redmond company has been not only cooking but also dogfooding (testing internally) codename Kumo, the next step for Live Search, with speculation pointing to the label Bing as the official brand. No word from the software giant as to where it stands on Yahoo.