Yesterday, TechCrunch reported that Microsoft and Yahoo were talking again. I was immediately skeptical. Recently, All Things Digital had called out TechCrunch as conducting piggyback reporting instead of doing their own heavy-lifting. While I thought that was a bit harsh (All Things Digital is a project of the Wall Street Journal, and quite frankly - who has their connections?), it came as no surprise that TechCrunch would attempt to break a big story.
Still, the mainstream press ran with the story. Surely, they had done their homework.
Maybe not.
This morning, Kara Swisher of All Things D explained why she didn't run with the story: she couldn't corroborate it. I read her story with a firm sense of "I thought so" until she said that her Yahoo and Microsoft sources "emphatically went out of their way yesterday–which is not so typical–to deny any talks were going on..."
Sounds like Ms. Swisher's sources are protesting a little too much.
If talks have resumed, it sounds like they might be doing it the right way this time - keeping the conversation behind closed doors instead of blasting rhetoric through the press. But that might be a big IF.
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