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News Corp isn't interested

The short list of potential bidders who could compete with Microsoft's offer for Yahoo decreased by one as News Corp's Rupert Murdoch said he is not interested.

Yahoo may be reaching out to someone, anyone, to keep them from Microsoft's clutches. Murdoch won't be a savior here, as the media magnate decided to leave this bit of business alone.

"We are definitely not going to make a bid for Yahoo," Murdoch said in a BBC report. "We are just not interested at this stage."

A price tag of upwards of $44.6 billion will make anyone blanch. AT&T and Time Warner may be in contention, but if Microsoft really wants Yahoo as much as it does now, they could easily escalate the bidding. It's difficult to see either Time Warner or AT&T fighting Microsoft for Yahoo.

Speaking of money, some thing Yahoo's acquisition will dampen the market in Silicon Valley for purchasing startup companies, the idea being a Microsoft deal takes Yahoo out of the acquisition mix.

Marc Andreessen of Netscape and Ning fame disagrees with the theory. He said in a recent blog post Yahoo simply hasn't been that active an acquirer of startups, and neither have Microsoft or Google.

"Microsoft, Yahoo, and Google are only buying a relatively small number of smaller companies at all today -- so given that, taking Yahoo, or even Microsoft for that matter, out of the M&A races isn't going to reduce the number of deals going down each year by very much," he said.