Henry Blodget’s got an interesting take on the recent UBS talk by Microsoft where they suggested a plan to capture “30-40%” of the search market over the next several years.  Although the literal reading of this does not seem to suggest a Yahoo buyout, Blodget is correct that it is simply absurd, even given the normal Microsoft bluster factor, for Microsoft to think they can capture this much of the market in a short time …. unless they buy Yahoo, which as Blodget points out gives them all this, and more, instantly.  

Given Yahoo’s modest capitalization of some 30 billion, and Yahoo’s huge online prospects (they have similar traffic to Google but with far poorer monetization of traffic), it would not be prohibitive for Microsoft to nab them.

I’ve noted before this would be an excellent move for Microsoft.  It still is.

Disclaimer: I’ve got some Yahoo shares.   Not that they are doing me much good right now.    But they’d probably jump in value if Microsoft bought them.   Did this influence me writing about this?   I don’t think so, but since money is the root of all evil you can’t really trust me on Yahoo analyses, disclaimers or not.   Also important is that nobody can predict the market swings with any forward looking reliability.   So there.