The Fat Lady Sings on Yahoo and Microsoft Deal

After months of on-again, off-again talks Yahoo has finally called it quits with Microsoft and signed a deal with Google. The deal is non-exclusive but will allow Google to sell some of the ads Yahoo runs alongside its search results over the next four years. Bloomberg is reporting that this new agreement may add up to $800 million to Yahoo’s annual sales.

Of course, there is some speculation that this was really Jerry Yang‘s way of appeasing Carl Icahn, who last month launched a proxy battle against Yahoo after it refused to sign with Microsoft. Icahn is not commenting on the Google deal, so one imagines we’ll have to wait till the shareholder’s meeting in August to find out whether this current deal is enough to convince him to call off the takeover.

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