Silicon Alley Insider is discussing the fact that Fox News Corp. is trying to make a back door deal with Yahoo. In the words of my friend Dave Taylor, “so what?”  Apparently, Yahoo will do anything not to fall into the hands of Microsoft or do they actually realize this is inevitable and they are trying to make Microsoft hurt a little when they raise the stakes.

Mike Arrington goes into a little more detail about what the deal may entail as it relates to what money or assets would trade hands or at least be a part of the deal.

According to our source, the deal structure would spin off Fox Interactive Media (the primary asset is MySpace, but IGN, Scout Media, Photobucket, Fox Sports, AmericanIdol.com, Flektor, Ksolo; plus investments in Hulu, Simply Hired and Snocap are also assets of FIM) into Yahoo, along with a big cash injection from News Corp. and an unnamed private equity fund. The total investment would be valued at around $15 billion.

I’m really failing to see what the benefits are to the shareholders of Yahoo.  They after all are the decision makers here.  Besides a big dose of cash what are the shareholders really gaining as it values their stock?  MySpace may be a nice carrot, but not something Yahoo really needs.  I doubt Myspace has the momentum to pull Yahoo from its current slide.

My thought is that this is a deal that is really just going to make Microsoft really hurt when they write that check.  Yahoo wants a competing offer to make sure that Microsoft must raise its own offer.  I think that Yahoo sees the writing on the wall but is doing what they can to make sure they go out in blaze of glory.  Of course at this point with all of those 1,000 employees now looking outside Yahoo for jobs, glory is a relative term.