And now it's over, again: Reuters is reporting that Yahoo and Microsoft ended talks late Thursday, as the Web pioneer agreed to let Google sell search ads on its site instead.

Both Yahoo and Microsoft issued statements that seemed to indicate it's over for real this time, that there was no way the two companies could come to an agreement for now. And with Yahoo facing increased pressure from shareholders to do something—its shares fell more than 10% yesterday as news of the talks' collapse hit Wall Street—Yahoo instead moved to quickly strike a deal with Google.

"Yahoo is being a reseller of Google whenever it makes sense and that is likely to be a lot of the time given how much more effective Google Web search ads have proven to be," Global Crown Capital analyst Martin Pyykkonen said in the report. We doubt Carl Icahn is thrilled.