News hitting everywhere Sunday night that was buzzed about Friday: The nuclear option I described for how Yahoo can extricate itself from Microsoft's bear-hug big may be becoming real. Word is that Google's Eric Schmidt called Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang Friday and offered to help, which likely amounts to more than the mischievous Dave Drummond blog post earlier today.
While we won't see a competing Google bid for Yahoo, I now give it perhaps a 25% chance that Yahoo tries to block this deal by doing something on the scale of outsourcing search-related advertising to Google. And if it a) comes quickly, and b) came with replacing Yang with a new CEO, it has a chance of succeeding.
Assuming Yahoo tries, of course, Microsoft will quickly take its $31 offer directly to shareholders and see if it can set up its own slate of Yahoo directors. What fun!
More from WSJ here and Reuters here.
