…are what two newspapers are currently speculating. No official deal of any kind has been made yet but apparently Microsoft has started talking with Yahoo! about a possible acquisition. Wall Street seems to be pretty happy about the news, as Yahoo! shares jumped 14.6-percent and analysts say the move is crucial to beating Google. However, there’s a problem with the reporting here. Those two newspapers? One is the well-respected Wall Street Journal while the other is the sketchy-as-hell New York Post (25 cents baby!). But hey, everything the Post prints is true, so this deal has gotta be happening.
So let’s say this deal does end up going through. Yahoo! is a pretty big company and it’s going to take a lot of cash for Microsoft to buy it out. In fact, early reports estimate that MS will have to pay around $50 billion or so for Yahoo! Inc., which is a lot of friggin’ money. Guess we’ll have to wait until Monday or next week to see if anything comes out of these talks.