At the All Things D conference in Carlsbad, CA, when asked whether Yahoo would be willing to entertain an offer from Microsoft, freshly minted Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz was quoted in the Wall Street Journal saying "If there’s boatloads of money and the right technology involved, we’d do a deal, sure."
Given that Yahoo has been trading in the teens recently and closed Wednesday at $14.94, it is unclear how high an offer would be considered "boatloads" of money.
Yahoo previously rejected an offer from Microsoft in February 2008 for $31/share (a 62% premium to the trading price at that time), that was later raised to $33/share, saying the offer was too low.
Given the stock has shaved off another 20% of its value since that offer, the valuation acceptable to Yahoo remains undetermined.
There is some speculation that the two companies will potentially set up a joint venture as a separate company, or a likely scenario is search partnership between the two companies.
One thing to note, when asked what kind of company Yahoo is, Bartz was adamant in stating that the company was not Google.
Had there been confusion about that?