The Wall Street Journal has a great summary of the breakdown of the initial Yahoo Microsoft merger talks a few months ago, complete with something of a  play by play in how corporate strategies on both sides …failed.    My read is that the personal mix of Yang and Ballmer was probably all wrong for this, though I still think that part of Yang and Yahoo board’s idea was to play foolishly hard to get in an effort to either kill the deal or boost the price to an unreasonably high $37.

It’s now clear that strategy failed and I’m sticking to my prediction when all this began – Yahoo will be sold to Microsoft, who might work with other partners in the deal, for very close to $35 per share.

Microsoft and Yahoo are clearly back at the table and I think it is even clearer than before that a deal will be done.    I’m compelled to say “I told you so” and I’m looking forward to looking up the many foolish stories written last month that suggested the deal was clearly over when it was obvious then and now that this is a deal that is very unlikely to die.

Disclosure:  Long on YHOO