It's now being reported that Verizon and Yahoo are exclusively negotiating. That's as close as anyone has gotten since Microsoft made an offer years ago.
Verizon is really doing a big transition with this acquisition and their AOL acquisition. They've acquired alot of valuable web space to put adds on/monetize. This is a probably good news for Yahoo employee's as Verizon then has a vested interest in keeping the company running and not splitting it up into pieces like a PE firm may be more inclined to do.
The one interesting thing I've heard is that Verizon isn't interested in Yahoo's patent portfolio, which means it could still be up for grabs.
Hopefully its bought by a Microsoft/Google consortium and very liberally cross licensed rather than a private equity firm who will look to more aggressively monetize it.
I also heard that Tim Armstrong, formerly of Google with Mayer will lead the combined AOL/Yahoo company, which means that Mayer probably isn't coming along as part of this deal. I think most people expected this.
If this ends up going through for the reported 3.5 billion, then Verizon has bought a significant portion of traffic on the web for roughly 8 billion (AOL was acquired for 4.4 Billion). This could end up looking like a very good acquisition in a few years!
