There is a rumor floating around out there that Apple could be a potential savior of Yahoo from the grasp of Microsoft. While just about every large company has now be named as a potential Yahoo suitor, Apple is an interesting name because of their long heated rivalry with Microsoft – certainly sneaking in at the last moment and stealing away Yahoo would be nice feeling for Steve Jobs. That said, don’t look for such a move to happen.

First of all, while Apple has a ton of cash on hand that had people (including me) questioning what Apple would use it for, it is only $15 billion dollars. That’s $30 billion below Microsoft’s proposed offer – and many experts believe that price tag may have to go up before a deal is done. Even Microsoft is thought to be likely to put itself in debt when and if such a deal gets done – I don’t think Apple would be willing to do that just to piss off Microsoft.

While Microsoft’s hopes in purchasing Yahoo are clear – they want to better compete with Google is search and more importantly, online advertising – Apple would have no seemingly no straightforward goal for using Yahoo. Sure, it could be a nice complimentary service to have as things continue to go online, but that would also take a lot of work from Apple and likely distract them from the 4 core goals (Mac, iPod, iPhone, Apple TV) they are already working on now.

It may sound nice and be an intriguing story line on paper, but Apple buying Yahoo wouldn’t make a whole lot of sense.