MicroSoft Talking With.... Somebody! Who?

MicroSoft is looking to counter the AOL deal by partnering with somebody.

Ian McAllister, of MicroSoft, recently posted

I had a meeting the other day with some senior players at another Tier 1 internet company. I won't share the name of the company, but suffice it to say that I'm 99% positive you're a customer. At the end of the discussion one of the people I was meeting with threw out a blanket offer to brainstorm other ways in which our companies might work together. He then stated that his company was willing to entertain ideas for working with Microsoft that would help our Search and/or advertising business, with one of the goals being to prevent Google from dominating those spaces even more than they are now. He was essentially saying that his company would help Microsoft level the playing field with Google in search and advertising.

On ZDNet a few people left comments that Yahoo! was too obvious and it could be Amazon or eBay. Others have suggested Comcast or AT&T. Personally I think that somebody can only be Yahoo!, and that they should just buy Yahoo! outright.

When AOL was going to partner with MicroSoft a large part of the reason they backed out of the deal was MicroSoft's systems were clunky. What are the odds that MicroSoft and Yahoo! cross sell ads or MicroSoft buys a piece of Yahoo! and keeps running their ads?

MicroSoft is trading flat. Yahoo! and Amazon stock are down half a percent on the day. eBay, AT&T and Comcast are up about a half a percent. IAC is up 2% on no specific news.