The needle is moving: Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO) is now in informal talks with Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) on the merger, reports News.com citing sources. This may still not lead to any conclusion, but Yahoo may have seen the writing on the wall.

This comes after efforts from Yahoo to talk to News Corp (NYSE: NWS). AOL (NYSE: TWX) and others on some sort of combination, and yet not coming up with anything reasonable to counter Microsoft’s offer. Microsoft has set no internal deadline of when they’re ready to say enough is enough, the story says.

Update: WSJ confirms that a meeting was held today, but suggests that it wasn’t a negotiation session; instead it was more a Microsoft sales pitch to Yahoo, basically laying out their vision for the deal. No bankers attended, it’s not clear of the CEOs did, and no follow-up talks have been scheduled. Still it sounds like a start.

Update 2: