Tom Brokaw during his exit interview with Bill Gates last Friday asked, “Do you think in a year from now, when you’re down at the foundation offices, you’ll look up at Microsoft and see Yahoo as a permanent wing of Microsoft, a part of it? Do you think the deal will get done?”

To which Gates replied, “No, I don’t think so. But there are plenty of decisions ahead that Steve [Ballmer] will get to make about what he invests in, R&D, and what kind of deals he does. I don’t think that one’s likely but there are plenty of others that will get done and I’ll look on with great respect.”

That said it’s still not over.

According to the rumor mongers, Microsoft has been talking to Time Warner and News Corp, supposedly about partitioning Yahoo like it was Poland if you listen to the Wall Street Journal. Microsoft would get the search and one of the others would get the leftovers. (Sanford Bernstein puts the break-up value of Yahoo at $20-$24, which is not your father’s $33, the figure Microsoft offered for the whole shooting match in May.)

Reuters and CNBC said the WSJ story Wednesday was utter twaddle – and pointed out that even the Journal said a deal was “unlikely” – but it boosted Yahoo’s stock 3.4% (more inter-day) after closing Tuesday at $20.20, having finally dropped briefly into the forbidden zone of $19 and change, pennies away from where in was the moment before Microsoft went public with its ultimately rejected opening bid of $31 a share offer on February 1.

That was the day after Yahoo – having blown negotiations with Microsoft and having done a deal with Google, its single greatest rival – advanced the revisionist argument that Microsoft never really wanted to buy all of Yahoo.

“The record casts doubt on whether Microsoft was ever committed to a whole company acquisition,” Yahoo management told the SEC.

It described Microsoft as being “unresponsive and inconsistent” and itself as still “open to a sale.”

It also filed a 32-page PowerPoint presentation that it hopes to use to convince stockholders to let current management continue to run the company come the stockholders meeting and proxy fight August 1.

According to Yahoo, corporate raider Carl Icahn, the guy who wants to unseat the Yahoo board and fire CEO Jerry Yang, has an “ill-defined plan” of somehow selling the joint to an unwilling Microsoft. Icahn now reportedly wants at least four of Yahoo’s nine board seats and Yahoo is reportedly offering two to avoid the proxy fight.

The latest stories have Yahoo, like Microsoft, talking to Time Warner about folding AOL into Yahoo and Time Warner taking a minority position in the result but not coming any closer to any resolution than they were a few months ago.