Icahn Pushes, Again, to Put Yahoo Back in Play - Page 2

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In for a dime, in for a dollar?

"Search is the only part of the business that Microsoft wants [but] I think it's going to be difficult to get that deal done unless someone [else] is going to take the content business," Rob Helm, director of research at Directions on Microsoft, told InternetNews.com.

That sentiment, to some extent, is echoed by another long-term Microsoft watcher.

"I doubt that they'd buy the whole company, but they've been talking to other companies" to buy off the parts that Microsoft doesn't want or need," Rob Enderle, principal analyst at Enderle Group, told InternetNews.com.

Still both he and Helm see solid reasons why Microsoft still views Yahoo as an important acquisition.

The latest worldwide market share numbers from Web statistics firm Net Applications give Google 78.35 percent of searches in June, followed by Yahoo at 11.78 percent. In comparison, the combined share of Microsoft's MSN Search and Live Search in the same time period totaled a mere 5.22 percent.

That's important in Ballmer's eyes.

"Steve's wanted to do this deal and with his sales background he thinks about market share," Enderle said.

A combination of Microsoft's search share with Yahoo's would only yield 17 percent, That could be a critical number, however.

"[With Yahoo], they become number two in the search business and, more importantly, reach a critical mass where advertisers can't ignore them," Helm added.

A Google spokesperson told InternetNews.com that the search giant would have no comment on "today's Yahoo news."