I'm sure some people scoffed when I said the NY Times was a possible purchaser of Yahoo earlier this week.  And while nothing is certain, I the possibility is even greater today.  MarketingVOX reported today that NYTimes.com has snatched former Yahoo VP of Brand Marketing Murray Gaylord away from the search company.  Gaylord will serve as NYTimes.com's VP of Marketing and is said to assume the new position in early January.

This is a strategy that's been played numerous times in the past.  An executive leaves one company to go to another.  Once at the new company, the executive goes after his or her former employer and does one of two things:

1. They try to purchase the old employer
2. Using the knowledge of what the old employer was working on, they use the resources of the new company to do the same thing even better

So it's quite possible that Gaylord is going to NYTimes.com with ambitions of acquiring Yahoo at some future date.  If not, he's just as likely to take Yahoo on.  Am I saying that NYTimes.com is going to become a search engine?  Of course not.  But Gaylord has extensive knowledge of what was going on Yahoo.  At the very least, I'm sure he'll use that knowledge to give NYTimes.com a one-up on Yahoo's future plans.

Don't say I didn't warn you.