And, if we believe the latest report from AdAge, neither Microsoft or Yahoo will get exactly what they want from a potential partnership. Instead, both will make significant compromises in order to put a deal together that might just help them compete with Google.

The deal will likely be based purely on a revenue share"a far cry from what Yahoo had hoped for:

Yahoos request for an upfront payment (it is said to have asked for several hundred million), in addition to revenue guarantees that would amount to billions over the course of the deal, caused a breakdown last week in the on-again-off-again talks. But they were revived late on Thursday, according to executives with knowledge of the situation.

Of course, Microsoft had hoped to have purchased Yahoos search business outright, but the stubbornness of CEO Carol Bartz virtually guaranteed that the Redmond company would instead launch a new search engine"and early indications suggest Bing is a big success!

Still, while Microsoft may not get to acquire Yahoos search business, it does get to eliminate a roadblock between it and Google. By using Bing to power Yahoos search results, Microsoft would nudge closer to a 30% search market share.

Reading the AdAge article, its clear there are still a lot of loose ends that need tying-up, but we could see an announcement as early as this week.

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