Yahoo, Facebook Talking Search? Not Likely

A report surfaced in U.K. newspaper The Telegraph over the weekend that Yahoo President and CEO Marissa Mayer and Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg were in talks aimed at having their respective companies collaborate on Web-based search, but AllThingsD pointed out that Yahoo is already locked into a search partnership with Microsoft that is unlikely to be terminated anytime soon.

The Telegraph mentioned the agreement between the two Internet giants to share Yahoo News on Facebook and the settlement of their long-running dispute over patents, adding a previous quote from Facebook Co-Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg about search, in which he said the social network is “pretty uniquely positioned to answer the questions people have,” but, as AllThingsD pointed out, all the newspaper had in terms of a search partnership between the two companies was a statement that board members expected the talks to head in that direction.

AllThingsD said the Yahoo-Microsoft partnership is unlikely to end in the near future, adding that Microsoft would likely fight any attempts by Yahoo to bail out early, and that if Yahoo and Facebook are indeed in talks, they might revolve around more content sharing, tighter integration of their respective services, or advertising.

Readers: What do you think Yahoo and Facebook are up to, if they are actually up to anything at all?