Valleywag's preferred partner for Yahoo is Google, because the combination of their two search businesses would create a universal exchange for online advertising, and the greatest windfall for shareholders. (We'll worry about monopoly power some other time.) But Breaking Views, the smart financial opinion site, suggests another deal for the demoralized internet media giant. General Electric has already opened up the possibility of a sale of NBC, its television network. Why not, asks Breaking Views — probably prompted by an opportunistic banker with a deal idea to float — combine it with Yahoo?

The thesis glosses over one big drawback: Yahoo's strength as a media company is its agnostic attitude to content creation. Yahoo has typically been open to deals with all the traditional TV and movie makers, and its users expect a wide array of programming. A deal with NBC, which also owns Universal studios, would push other networks and studios into the arms of Yahoo's competitors.

But, if Yahoo is to fall to one of the traditional media companies, the Peacock Channel has much to be said for it. As Breaking Views notes, it doesn't have a cable division, and can therefore distribute shows online with fewer qualms about cannibalization of existing business. There are plenty of opportunities for cross-promotion between, say, Yahoo Finance and NBC's business channel, CNBC. And there wouldn't be much controversy about leadership of a merged company: NBC's chief executive, twenty years younger than Yahoo's Terry Semel, would be the natural candidate.

Here's Valleywag's additional suggestion: NBC Yahoo would be a content company. A merger would mark the end of Yahoo's hope of catching up with Google in search. So, there's a side deal to be done. The reckoning is that, if it just handed over search ads to Google, Yahoo could add $1bn to its annual earnings. So how about this? GE spins off NBC to Yahoo, which in turn sheds the search marketing business Yahoo bought with Overture; and the merged company sign a long-term commitment for Google to power both search and the text ads tuned to search results.

That arrangement, even if Google guaranteed lavish revenue, would represent the abandonment of Yahoo's technology ambitions. But, amid all the hoopla of a deal between the internet portal pioneer, and one of the three great TV networks, maybe nobody would notice the retreat.