Sale Of Yahoo! Expected By Some

Yesterday, we covered Newscorp’s alleged interest in selling MySpace off to Yahoo!. Today, we’ll take a big step back and ruminate another potential transaction: The sale of Yahoo! itself.

Now, this is all hearsay at the moment, but we can’t simply discount the murmurs on the subject as noise. There’s got to be something to the speculation, yes?

Who knows. What we do know is Yahoo! isn’t in the healthiest it could be, and the fact that the internal structure of the company is so scattered and disjointed means only a significant regroup and thorough (targeted) pink-slipping can get the company back into the swing of things. It’s just been putzing about, following half-assed behind jolly and youthful Google for too long, and it’s gotta make a shift.

Right now, though, it’s not holding the best of hands. That’s quite clear. And it’s no secret that people, corporations, or whathaveyou like to buy low in order to get a good return on their investment(s). Put two and two together, and you find, oh yes, Yahoo! may in fact be publicly pursued by another entity fairly soon. In a way, sure, one could see how great a risk such a Yahoo! would be for the eventual buyer. The company is huge, after all, and it’s not so easy to move huge. Throw in plenty of obstacles to boot, and one could easily deduce that a purchase of Yahoo! is iffy at best. Why would another entity want to complicate things even more, anyhow? If Yahoo! can’t handle the pressure on its own, what says it’ll face its shareholders in future meeting with a parent by its side and fare any better?

If Yahoo! is indeed destined to be owned by another in the near future, however, the other should be interested in seeing that the business prospers as it did pre-1999. Let Yahoo! be Yahoo!. Don’t complicate things. Don’t have its assets gutted and sold off. Just nudge (or force, if need be) the company to find itself again.

My guess is it will likely be a private equity firm at the other side of the table. Yes, I understand the piece published at GigaOM linked above shows Microsoft as the most plausible suitor for Yahoo!, but such a deal would scream redundancy, and we’d no doubt find trouble brewing both in Sunnyvale and Redmond in no time flat.

I should emphasize some more the point that there’s really no reason Yahoo! couldn’t do the reinvention all on its alone. It’s got the resources to do so. Only, sometimes an outside party is needed to get someone or something – in this case an Internet company – back on track. Like a neutral mediator or consultant does when things aren’t looking so good for a couple, family, or even a business. And if said “other party” can make a few bucks for itself through the intervention, why the heck not?

Though my heart is devoid of any emotional attachment to any Web business in particular, I’d hate to see Yahoo! continue to lose its luster. We need to have a company giving Google a run for its money (so to speak). Because otherwise, in a few years’ time, Google, without someone to contest with, will itself start to sleep on the job. And that wouldn’t a good thing for anyone.