This sign may soon read "Yahoogle!"

Some months ago, Yahoo turned down a $44-billion-dollar buy-out offer from Microsoft, choosing to stick with Carol Bartz and attempt to make their way on their own in a crowded, rough market for search engines and social networking hubs.  Well, Carol Bartz is gone, and once again, companies are lining up to make an attempt to get a piece of Yahoo’s 15.5% of search engine share.  Google, Microsoft, and even some of Yahoo’s subsidiaries are looking to buy the company.

Google’s the company in the best shape to purchase Yahoo, but they’re the company most likely to run afoul of anti-monopoly legislation in the process.  Google has $42.6 billion dollars in cash and Yahoo is only worth about $20 billion, but Google also has 65 percent of the total Internet search traffic.  Any move by Google to pick up Yahoo would be made through a third party backed by Google cash (akin to the time Microsoft spent $150 million to keep Apple from going under).  Microsoft and their Bing search engine only have 14.7 percent of the search traffic, meaning they benefit much more from acquiring Yahoo in that sphere (and Bing already powers Yahoo’s search engines, so it’s not like MS would be losing something by picking up Yahoo complete).

A dark horse competitor?  Yahoo’s own Alibaba search engine.  Alibaba is the biggest search engine in China, and Yahoo is Alibaba’s largest shareholder.  Not only does Alibaba want its 43 percent of shares back from Yahoo, they’re also interested in expanding to pick up Yahoo’s portal and expanding their presence in other markets with the help of some third-party financiers.  Maybe Google and Alibaba can team up?

Tags: search engines, internet searching, Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, Alibaba, Google preparing to buy Yahoo, Google and Microsoft pricing Yahoo, Yahoo for sale, technology, web browsing, Yahoo bidding war, Yahoo for sale, mergers, Bing, Internet

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