If you take the rarely said but significantly-held opinion that Yahoo have to make some changes soon or struggle, what could be more likely…

“… the two companies - which first explored the idea a few years ago and then went their own ways - were looking at ways they could pair their strengths to create a greater competitor to Google…”

Well, the point being that what would be the point of msn? Microsoft have never been in love with the internet. If they could have got away with calling it DeskWeb, they would have..

Obviously the combination of PPC programmes would be interesting and tricky - but maybe it’s the blogs - Spaces and Yahoo360 - where the greatest effect in terms of change of competitor could lie - although how you’d go about challenging Blogger is the real and present nightmare. The company-knows-best, rather controlling attitude of MS, approach, ie login to free hotmail every 30 days or else, the tight controls on what code/scripts can appear on Spaces, would presumably extend.

However, by the end of the day, it appeared that the story was misguided, or at least out-of-date, unless you define “takeover” as “partnership.”

Yes, a non-story - with testing-the-water as a heading… You’d sort of think it has to be - one day - if not now…