Microsoft bullied Yahoo! and now it wishes to rewrite history, making it appear as though Microsoft rescued Yahoo! with a search deal (yes, news occurred since the report above).
Would it really be better for Yahoo to align with an abusive convicted monopolist that absolutely controls several markets than to sign a deal with Google? As shown before, the answer is a resounding "No". The Microsoft-influenced federal government (Department of Justice) may have thrown Yahoo! to the bulldogs. That's just what Microsoft wanted -- driving Yahoo! to misery and fragility, emitting its valuable staff in the process. ⬆
They don't care about the users and issuing a few bytes with random characters costs them next to nothing. It gives them control over billions of human beings.
If even one media outlet told you in 2010 that Microsoft would fall from 100% (of Web requests) to about 1 in 8 Web requests, you'd probably struggle to believe it