Yahoo's Hail Mary tour stops at Time Warner

If Yahoo were a quarterback it would be trying to engineer a touchdown from the 20 yard line with 30 seconds to go. In other words, Yahoo needs a minor miracle to beat Microsoft's bid. The clock is ticking and Yahoo is heaving Hail Mary passes in hopes that Time Warner, News Corp. or any one other than Microsoft will catch the ball.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Yahoo's latest stop on its Hail Mary tour is Time Warner. One possibility would be folding Time Warner's AOL into Yahoo (Techmeme). This potential deal smells like desperation to me. What would folding AOL into Yahoo accomplish? Sure Yahoo would get more scale, but AOL offers little strategically other than a bunch of ad technologies platforms (as if Yahoo needed any more of those). I suppose having Time Warner as a major shareholder would be a plus, but do you really want those guys offering counsel? Didn't think so.

Of course, Yahoo's talks with News Corp. are also reportedly still underway. That deal actually makes some sense.

All of these potential deals are being reported as March 13--Microsoft's deadline to launch a proxy war-- looms. One could argue that this proxy war will never happen--Yahoo may come limping back to Microsoft anyway. There's a lot of inevitability surrounding this Microhoo deal.