It’s been relatively quiet the past 24-hours from both the Yahoo and Microsoft camps in terms of the hostile takeover – too quiet. TechCrunch and Silicon Alley Insider appear to know at least half of the reason – Yahoo is in the midst of ongoing discussions with News Corp. about a potential counter offer to rival Microsoft’s.

Such a deal would involve News Corp. spinning off Fox Interactive Media (MySpace’s parent) to be a part of Yahoo and News Corp. giving Yahoo a large cash infusion – the total package being worth around $15 billion. In exchange, News Corp. would own upwards of 20% of Yahoo, making them the largest shareholder in the company.

This would be beneficial to Yahoo for a couple reasons, the first of which is obviously that they would remain independent (though with a new minority owner in News Corp), and second this would apparently be a better deal money-wise than Microsoft’s. News Corp’s package would put Yahoo’s total value north of $50 billion rather than the $44.6 Microsoft is currently offering.

The main problem in such a deal, as TechCrunch notes, is that Yahoo may still have to outsource its search marketing to Google to make the numbers work. While all parties involved would likely be very happy to do that – the FTC might have something to say about it. However with three huge companies with some of the smartest minds in the world working for them, I wouldn’t be surprised if they were able to come up with some sort of arrangement that makes the numbers work and wouldn’t necessarily draw the ire of antitrust watchdogs.

I foresaw such a three-way deal taking place 10 days ago:

Or perhaps Google could try to funnel money to someone like News Corp. so they can put in a bid – News Corp. does seem open to someone buying into MySpace, and Google has a large ad-deal with MySpace…

Perhaps News Corp. could send MySpace Google’s way rather than Yahoo’s and in exchange Yahoo could take control of advertising across FIM (which Google isn’t doing a great job at anyway apparently). Who knows, it’s really just thinking out loud at this point, there are a million things that could go down.

This is all starting to read very much like sports teams’ backroom dealings leading up to the trade deadline. The NBA is famous for its huge multi-team deals – perhaps Yahoo/News Corp/Google can pull one off. I think Yahoo would take draft picks and expiring contracts at this point.