Microsoft renews Yahoo courtship - few details

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(05-18) 19:06 PDT --
After abruptly abandoning its coup d'etat command for Yokel Inc. 2 hebdomads ago, Microsoft Corp. said Lord'S Day that it have made a new, downsized offering to collaborate with the Sunnyvale Web portal while leaving the door unfastened to a amalgamation down the road.

Details of the proposal were vague. But the offering raises the possibility of everything from purchasing a portion of Yokel to an advertisement partnership in which Microsoft would put its advertisements on Yahoo.

Another possible is a joint venture in search, an country where the two companies have got lagged far behind industry dominator Google Inc. Inch recent years, some analysts had speculated about Microsoft and Yokel whirling off their hunt concern into a single company that they would both control.

In any case, the move reignites the wooing between the two engineering giants, which were not able to hold on a terms in the first form of their negotiations.

Now Microsoft executive directors are asking for new talks, reversing their determination to "move on" in the aftermath of their failing $47.5 billion command and jump-start their online advertisement concern without Yahoo.

"Microsoft is considering and have raised with Yokel an option that would affect a dealing with Yokel but not an acquisition of all of Yahoo," Microsoft said in a statement.

Microsoft said that there is no self-assurance that both sides will attain an agreement.

Yahoo's response was oblique other than confirming that Microsoft was uninterested in acquiring all of the company, at least for now.

Yahoo added that its board, which have been considering a figure of trades to resuscitate its slumping business, "will measure each of our alternatives, including any Microsoft proposal" while adding that it is "open to pursuing any dealing which is in the best involvement of our stockholders."

The overture to restart dialogues come ups four years after billionaire investor militant Carl Icahn launched a command to throw out Yahoo's 10-member board, which he accused of acting irrationally by opposing a merger. By proposing a slate of replacements, to be voted on at Yahoo's yearly stockholder meeting July 3, he trusts to coerce Yokel back to the negotiating table.

Although Icahn is legendary for forcing loath boards to act, Yokel President Roy Bostock responded to the onslaught last hebdomad by saying that Yokel will only accept a amalgamation that appropriately values the company.

A beginning familiar with the substance said Icahn hadn't been in contact with Microsoft about Sunday's proposal. But that doesn't govern out the possibility of the company cooperating with him later on.

Microsoft's proposal doesn't prevent it from trying to get Yokel outright in the future. That point was hammered topographic point by the company, which said Lord'S Day that it was "not proposing to do a new command to get all of Yokel at this time," but that it "reserves the right to reconsider that option depending on future developments and treatments that may take place with Yokel or treatments with stockholders of Yokel or Microsoft or with other 3rd parties."

To beef up its lagging concern and go more than feasible as an independent company, Yokel is discussing a assortment of trades with other companies, including a program to outsource some of its hunt advertisement concern to Google. An understanding may be announced within a week, according to beginnings familiar with the matter.

The possible unnerves Microsoft chief executive officer Steve Ballmer. In a missive to Yokel chief executive officer Kraut Yang on May 3, he cited a Google partnership as a major ground for withdrawing his amalgamation command and added that a trade would ache Yahoo's hereafter growing and raise serious antimonopoly issues as a effect of the No. One and No. Two hunt engines joining forces.

Ballmer's new proposal to Yokel may be aimed at disrupting the Google deal, which have already prompted an antimonopoly enquiry by the Department of Justice.

Kevin Johnson, a Microsoft president, said in an e-mail to employees Lord'S Day in preliminary to an advertisement conference this hebdomad that his company is on the route to reviving its Internet business, which have lagged financially in the human face of Google's success. He spoke of attempts to be announced this hebdomad to pass some of its online places including hunt and the MSN portal while bolstering advertisement sales.

"Regardless of the result of any new discussions," he said about the Yokel proposal, "it is of import that we go on to travel forward to beef up our online services business. The fact is that we are not where we desire to be in this concern yet and we've been in this place longer than we'd all like."

E-mail Jules Verne Kopytoff at .