It's no secret that Yahoo has seen better days.  We've all read a lot of speculation, predictions, and advice directed toward the Sunnyvale, California search company.  Some of us have even offered that advice or made those predictions.

I ran across an interesting article at BusinessWeek.com suggesting that Yahoo would be a good candidate for a buyout.

Apparently, buyout firms have more money than they know what to do with these days and Troy Mastin, an analyst with William Blair, said some of that money could be used to buyout Yahoo and turn the company into a privately held business.  But to make the deal worthwhile, someone would have to shell out almost $50 billion.  That makes such a buyout highly unlikely.

I agree with what the BusinessWeek.com article had to say, though.  A privately held Yahoo could work on its restructuring efforts out of the public eye.  In fact, a private Yahoo could work on ways to regain market share without everyone else knowing what was going on.

What do you think?  Would a privately-held Yahoo be in a better position to take on Google?  Is it already too late?  Or should Yahoo continue doing exactly what it's doing now to fight the Google search machine?