"If you can’t do it yourself, buy it or join them," says Stan Schroeder at frantic industries.com, trotting out the conventional wisdom on why Microsoft should buy Yahoo! — to bulk up in online advertising to take on Google.

But not all bloggers are so sure a deal would pan out so neatly.

“Is this the AOL/Time Warner of this decade?” asks Keith Hahn of dealbreaker.com, citing an impending clash of personalities.

“Integration could be a huge problem,” he says. “Yahoo has … a co-founder (Jerry Yang) that is said to dislike Microsoft and actively avoid the use of Microsoft products.”

Others give a heavily qualified thumbs up.

“Would it be a smart strategic move for Microsoft and Yahoo to combine forces? Absolutely,” says Henry Blodget at the Internetoutsider site. “Is the best way to do this to have Microsoft suck Google into the massive Windows/Office empire? Absolutely not.”

Mr Blodget says that if the world’s largest software group were to swallow up Yahoo!, it should “immediately spin the Yahoo-MSN [internet search and online advertising] business out as a separate company. If it doesn't, both Yahoo and MSN will die.”

Interestingly, Mr Blodget’s rationale for why Microsoft shouldn’t go down the mega-merger route without spinning off the online ad arm echoes what some insiders have been saying – very vocally – inside Yahoo!.

“With all due respect to the amazing talent and resources at Microsoft, no company can do everything,” Mr Blodget says.

“Microsoft is now so massive and broad that it is competing with IBM and Oracle on one end, and Sony, Apple, Google, and Yahoo on the other. All of these businesses are complex and tough, and focus is a major advantage.”

Brad Garlinghouse, a seniour Yahoo executive, made the same basic point about Yahoo! having its thumb in too many pies when he wrote his famous “peanut butter” manifesto last November. Yahoo was spread too thin across too many areas, Mr Garlinghouse argued. It needed to slim down to shape up.

Mr Blodget follows the same sort of logic: “If Microsoft spun out Yahoo-MSN, the company would be able to recruit the best talent, run its own show, and, if necessary, compete with the Microsoft empire.

“The company could have an exclusive technology deal with Microsoft and get first crack at all partnerships. Most importantly, existing Microsoft and Yahoo shareholders would benefit from all the upside: Microsoft would be the company's single largest shareholder.”

Again, however, the question of personalities raises its head.

“Alas,” he adds. “This sensible solution seems unlikely ... because ego will get in the way.”

Others are digging down into the technical implications of a Microsoft-Yahoo! tie-up.

“An acquisition made tons of sense before Microsoft built its own crawler and ad system,” Danny Sullivan of SearchEngineLand says.

“Now it has both. Getting Yahoo last year might have saved Yahoo from upgrading its own ad system, since it could have used the new one Microsoft built. But Yahoo has finished that work, as well. So a merger or acquisition makes less sense - and the brand confusion potential remains significant. But stranger things have worked.”

Mr Sullivan leaves the real sting until the end of his comment: “Of course, if Yahoo is for sale, Google may be interested,” he says. “Just had to throw that out there.”

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