Time of 3 weeks is what Steve Ballmer gave Yahoo to stop playing and start merging. Now, Legg Mason, the institutional investor with 7% stake in the search portal has given indications that it may help Yahoo stay independent if Microsoft lowers its offering.

An excerpt from SearchEngineJournal

After Microsoft threatened in a letter this weekend to lower its offer, Bill Miller of Legg Mason said, "Telling the shareholders you're going to take something away from them is not a way to get their support." Miller indicated that the current $29 bid is "not something [he's] too excited about", but didn't say definitively that he would refuse a lower bid:

"If Microsoft lowers the price I'm not prepared to say that's better than Yahoo remaining independent," he said.

These are testing times for Yahoo cause despite the buzz of its product releases fact is that it continues to lose valuable search share to Google and definitely Microsoft will not be impressed about that. There is the other speculation that Microsoft needs Yahoo more to prep its base for an onslaught of in the web services and to make a dent on the consumer side of mobile offerings. Whatever it may be, the deal may take quite some time to get through all the legal formalities and more delay does not bode well for Microsoft. It is to be seen if the search giant will get its way with a better deal.