It's possible that this is an unsubstantiated rumor... but it might have teeth, goog is seriously kicking both yhoo and msft's ass on the ad revenue front. The merger happening has real possibilities, if YHOO wakes up.
However... both Yhoo and Msft are both rather stupid in the way they handle their ads. Goog is INGENIOUS, those ads are in your face non stop, but they are not bothersome. No one wants to click on a banner. I think we've all gotten to the point where we don't even SEE banner ads. And Yhoo, at least in my mind, is all about banner ads.
For that reason, I don't even know if they changed their interface, because I don't use it, I use GOOG (and help feed their bottom line, despite their refusal to split and give investors some value).
Maybe if MSFT and YHOO merge, there will be more brains behind why net searches are not very profitable for them. Tho in my experience, the more cooks in the kitchen, the crappier the meal.
Rumor or no... yhoo is way up. If there were no teeth to the rumor, those who know about it would be bailing by now, taking their morning profit and running away with it. It's 11am, and YHOO is not heading back down.
I've been sitting here ready to dump and run for the last hour... but it's not budging. We'll see by afternoon, but it still looks good.
Also, YHOO's 52 week high is $34... the upside hasn't even come that close to $34.
The other thing to watch is... MSFT is down $.48 because of this rumor... when MSFT starts flying back up, you know it's bogus.