Yahoo! Inc., fighting off a takeover bid from Microsoft Corp., is in talks with News Corp., according to a report on The Wall Street Journal’s web site.

The talks, according to the Journal are an attempt to fend off Microsoft’s offer, which was initially valued at $44.6 billion.

For many, Yahoo! has come to symbolize the Web. Its playful name and colorful logo defined Internet style, and its signature yodel was a siren song for people who were curious about a new media known as “the World Wide Web.”

Created in 1994 by a pair of Stanford graduate students as a simple directory of interesting Web sites, Yahoo! went public early in 1996. It was valued at $848 million after its first day of trading despite widespread suspicion about the viability of advertising-supported Web sites.

But the company quickly disproved naysayers by attracting mainstream advertisers and turning a profit.

Yahoo! capitalized on the rapidly growing interest in the Internet, offering news, financial information, television listings, games, and other content, plus services such as e-mail, web-hosting, shopping and community sites.

But Yahoo!’s stock price had dropped by more than 40 percent in the three months leading up to Microsoft’s bid, which was announced Feb. 1. The offer was 62 percent above Yahoo’s market value at the time.

One of his most coveted - and for me saddest - deals.