Can a portal buy time?

Yahoo extended a deadline to nominate board directors, buying time to pursue alternatives to Microsoft's buyout offer while negotiating with it at the same time, reports Reuters.

The March 14 deadline could have forced Microsoft and Yahoo into a formal proxy contest. Yahoo said Wednesday the deadline falls 10 days after it announces the date for its annual shareholder meeting, which is yet to be scheduled, giving the company some breathing room.

Yahoo is currently in talks with News Corp about possible options, and talks with AOL have been accelerated.

These tactics are common in takeover battles. BEA Systems delayed picking directors in December for its annual meeting, setting the stage for negotiations that led to a higher $8.5 billion bid from Oracle in January.

Yahoo maintains that the Microsoft bid undervalues the company, which includes a userbase of 500 million, lucrative overseas holdings and a smattering of cutesy web 2.0 properties like Flickr, MyBlogLog and del.icio.us.