Yahoo!

According to a report from WSJ, Google is currently in talks with private-equity firms regarding potentially providing assistance in the purchase of Yahoo Inc.

The report mentions the possibility Google is simply trying to bid up the purchase price to make it a less attractive deal for other potential buyers including Microsoft. Yahoo is currently in talks with Microsoft and private equity firm Silver Lake Partners as well as the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board regarding a possible deal. Although, there are reasons Google might find owning a piece of Yahoo’s 700 million plus unique monthly visitors beneficial.

The most obvious is advertising. According to the report, “Google wants to help sell the ad space across Yahoo sites as Yahoo has struggled to get good prices for it”. WSJ mentions the ability to push Google+ on the Yahoo community, but more importantly, a deal would provide Google with access to ads displayed in content from ABC News and other current premium content partners of Yahoo. According to the source, Google is interested in “having deeper business relationships with such publishers”.

Citing a “person familiar with the matter”, WSJ’s sources claim that Google has talked with two undisclosed private-equity firms, and while no deal has been struck, many are already discussing potential antitrust investigations. Forbes just published a story focusing on the antitrust issues of a potential Yahoo purchase, outlining the obvious predicament:

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As part of the Senate Judiciary hearings today, former former FTC official (and new Google employee) Suzanne Michel, testified under oath today that Google, Microsoft and Yahoo all bid to become the default search engine on iOS’s Mobile Safari Web Browser.  As we know, Google won, and as we can infer, Apple get’s some revenue from Google for making it its default search engine.  As we know from Apple being Apple, the quality of the search results was probably as big a part of the decision as the relatively small bits of revenue.

But as part of the testimony, Michel said briefly (before she was cut off) that 2/3rds of mobile search comes from Apple iOS devices.  That’s pretty interesting considering the share of Android devices in the market.  But not altogether surprising considering the web browser market share which includes those millions and millions of iPads.

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AllThingsD is reporting that along with Amazon, Yahoo, and Dish Network, Google has made a bid for the free video streaming service Hulu. AllThingsD doesn’t provide any details quite yet, but we can imagine Google’s bid is in the range of $1.5 – $2 billion — just like the other three companies are offering. AllThingsD can’t confirm if Google has made a definitive bid, or is just offering a sum of money.

Google chariman Eric Schmidt said at a conference in Europe last month that Google isn’t ready to give up on Google TV. He cites possible Google TV downfall is due to the scarce amount of set-top boxes rather than full television sets.

The acquisition of Hulu would sure be a break through for Google TV. Currently, almost every large television network is blocking streaming to Google TV, making the content lineup almost non-existent. With Hulu and its partners, Google could open up a whole new realm of content to the service.

AllThingsD has indictated that Google has made clear to Hulu that they are ready to offer a large sum of cash for the product, and we know they’re not scared to do it. Hulu isn’t exactly sure what their stance is on selling quite yet, but we’re sure to hear more in the coming weeks.

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