Yahoo! after the bell 10-16-06: Rumors before earnings tomorrow

A day before its quarterly earnings report and Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ: YHOO) shares have lost nearly 1% of their value, or 24 cents, to close at $24.18.

Over the weekend, I came across a few rumors regarding who should buy Yahoo!. None of these rumors seem to be substantiated, but at the very least they're interesting.

The rumor we've all heard of before and that seems to resurface every few months (I posted about it back in June) is the one about Microsoft Corp (NASDAQ: MSFT) buying Yahoo!. Back in June, however, Yahoo!'s market cap was nearly $44 billion, today it's around $35 billion. Does that make a difference in favor of this option?

The most interesting rumor, however, the one I haven't heard of before and that comes supposedly from Goldman's desk: Comcast or AT&T Inc. (NYSE: T) might buy Yahoo!. Now that's interesting. I don't know if I like the prospects, especially since Yahoo! needs to get "younger" not "older" and these companies are nothing but, yet, I can see synergies and that could be an interesting play.

Of course, while our own Douglas McIntyre suggested Yahoo! should buy AOL, others are suggesting Time Warner or News Corp. should buy Yahoo!. Again, these are completely in the realms of speculation. If it were a choice between these two, however, I'd rather it would be News Corp as, again, Yahoo! could benefit from this and not just the other way around. News Corp and Yahoo! could complement each other while with AOL, Yahoo! would pretty much have more of the same.