In a recent interview with The Times,  the Microsoft COO Kevin Turner hinted that a partnership with Yahoo may still go ahead. Although Turner was keen to make clear that, if the negotiations did go ahead the deal would be on a much smaller scale than first proposed. It is thought Microsoft are still keen to integrate their search and ad functions to catch up with market leaders Google.

This comes at a time of great interest when beta-testing of the super hush-hush search project Kumo has been reported to have finished. This could suggest that if any merger does occur, then the rebranded search function could be branded through this new search engine project.