SiliconBeat

Yahoo’s stock surged more than 4 percent after AllThingsD, a tech blog owned by Dow Jones, the publisher of the Wall Street Journal, reported that Yahoo and Microsoft are engaged in meaningful talks.
The report by Kara Swisher was based on anonymous sources that said a deal is “closer than it has ever been…we’re finally talking about the how rather than the if,” and that talks are “meaningful…The fact that there is even progress and engagement, after so many failed attempts between us, says a lot.”
Rick Munarriz, an analyst with the Motley Fool, says a deal that involved Microsoft providing technical infrastructure while Yahoo handled both search and display advertising sales would make sense. “This isn’t the ridiculous chatter that finds Yahoo! accepting gobs of money to hand over its precious real estate to Mr. Softy’s grubby hands,” he wrote in a post this morning.