Simple Chronicle!

As the Microsoft/Yahoo drama continues, several folks have suggested a few options such as hostile takeover by MS or Walk Away. Marc Andreessen has written a great post on this in great detail.

However, one option I don’t see being thrown around (maybe this is not possible at all) is the following. As Ballmer mentioned today in MSFT’s townhall meeting:

Q: What is attractive about Yahoo!?

A: We are absolutely 100% determined to build the most interesting position in the world in online advertising media and the kind of social connected social media experience. The future of the way people consume information is going to change in the next 10 years dramatically. We are absolutely committed to being the leading player. We are not today the leading player. We’ve got very talented bright people. But there are some structural things in the industry that make it hard to make rapid progress.

It almost seems to me that there are a few parts of Yahoo that Ballmer is interested in. I don’t think he wants every single business unit in Yahoo as badly as those few units. So, how about MSFT and YHOO come to a deal to just get those units that are of interest at > $19 (still offering a premium) and leave the rest to YHOO. This way, YHOO will get the premium it is looking for and MSFT will not have to go through all the integration/rationalization issues (of the non-interesting pieces) such as what do we do with Yahoo! Finance and MSN Money, what do we do with Zimbra when MSFT has it’s own service etc. etc.

The value for Yahoo in this deal is that YHOO can potentially sell the rest of the units to other companies/PE shops that are interested thereby managing to get an overall price of better than $37. Or even spin off those business units and run them separately without selling them to anyone.

Is this scenario even possible? Would anyone be willing to pick up the rest of YHOO’s pieces that MSFT is not interested in?