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After a deal outsourcing search advertising to Google failed to impress shareholders, Yahoo board members — including chairman Roy Bostock — are reconsidering a deal that would outsource and sell Yahoo's search business to Microsoft instead. This according to a News.com report, which cites a single source — "one major investor who has been in contact with both parties" — and says that like Yahoo, Microsoft is also willing to renew negotiations and even "sweeten" its offer. We're skeptical.

Since choosing Google, Yahoo's experienced only more internal turmoil. The kind that hardly makes the company or any part of it more appealing for acquisition. Yahoo's angstiest shareholder Carl Icahn is said to favor outsourcing Yahoo's search to Google, rather then selling part of the company to Microsoft. And finally, Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang already spent a week in Washington trying to convince lawmakers that a Google deal won't destroy the search market. The most likely explanation for News.com's story? A desperate Yahoo shareholder, anonymously leaking contrived news in order to jumpstart the negotiations or at least boost Yahoo's dismal stock price.