Microsoft's maniacal desire for an even greater monopoly has brought it back to the table with Yahoo, and now details are starting to leak out about just what the new deal might look like.

According to unrevealed sources, Microsoft's latest push involves a minority stake in the search giant, as well as the sale of a number of Yahoo's assets. The deal would reportedly see Yahoo Japan and the Alibaba Group, based in China, go up for sale — a revelation that caused a 4% drop in the two firm's stock price yesterday — while Big Evil would buy into what remained, primarily Yahoo Search. However, with Yahoo weakened by the sale of some divisions, Microsoft could then pull a double-cross and buy out the entire firm for less than they originally offered.

Google, for its part, is frantically meeting to decide what to do, with the only word out of its top-tier coming from CEO Schmidt: "After this press conference the three of us will meet and decide what our response is." Google is currently close to completing talks with Yahoo aimed at sealing a deal for Google to handle search advertising on Yahoo properties. Obviously, such a deal would be — let's say — prejudiced by a Microsoft buyout of Yahoo Search, given that attacking Google's hold on search is the Empire's reason for buying Yahoo. We've yet to learn what Google's plans are going forward, but we do know that Sergy Brin is offering Yahoo's Jerry Yang a lifeboat, saying: "Jerry is very talented and if he wants to work at Google we'd be very excited to have him."

We think that secretly, Google would side with an as-yet-unnamed Hungarian man's views of Microsoft: