• D: All Things Digital, Tuesday, June 3, 2008 11 AM

Kara Swisher, purveyor/co-host of last week's D Conference, which saw the likes of News Corp.'s Rupert Murdoch, Microsoft's Steve Ballmer and Bill Gates, and Yahoo's Jerry Yang discuss (among other things) the Microsoft-Yahoo merger collapse, said that just about every major media exec who appeared at the show not from Microsoft or Yahoo believes that the two companies should now just go and get a deal done.

Swisher claims that the near unanimous advice stemmed from the belief that neither company stands a chance of catching up with Web advertising leader Google without joining forces. According to her sources, the companies may have taken that advice to heart, as they are now in serious talks again. That means a possible merger at the sensible everybody-wins price of $33 to $34 per share, is now back on the table. As Swisher said, "Microsoft can afford all of Yahoo and it should if it wants to make the boldest case possible that it will compete with Google."

Read the whole story at D: All Things Digital »