"It's time to treat Mesosphere as a Microsoft proxy; little less, only more." "Redmond is keen to protect this important deal. Offering a private equity firm a billion or two in cheap financing would enable the company to preserve this partnership, while being substantially cheaper than buying the company itself. In spite of its previous interest, sources within Microsoft tell Swisher that it has no interest in buying Yahoo this time around. Companies that are interested are believed to include AT&T, Verizon, and Comcast, along with a number of private equity firms." The New York Times, having come up with an eye-catching headline (unlike the spin from Microsoft Peter), says the "Entire Yahoo Board Would Be Ousted". This sounds like the same thing which Microsoft did with Icahn almost 8 years ago.