Thousands of Yahoo employees are out of a job due to layoffs earlier this month. Since August 2010, Bing has powered Yahoo’s search results and in October 2010, Microsoft adCenter began powering paid search for both Bing and Yahoo. Rumor has it that Yahoo is discussing a renegotiation of its search and advertising deals with Microsoft, and Yahoo is “in active discussions” with Google about Google taking over Yahoo’s search business.

Google powered Yahoo’s search results from 2000 until Yahoo went independent in 2004. Yahoo partnered with Google on advertising in 2008, which attracted the attention of the Department of Justice–Google pulled out of the deal later that year over broader antitrust concerns and fear of being labeled a “monopolist”. Seems unlikely that Google will go down that road again. Google is under antitrust scrutiny from the FTC because competitors charge that Google is using its search dominance to promote its own services at the expense of competitors and consumers.