Anything to Complicate the Microsoft Bid, Eh Yahoo?

Google’s (GOOG) “Everybody-But-Facebook Coalition” may soon have a new member: Yahoo (YHOO). The New York Times reports that the company intends to join OpenSocial, a Google-led alliance that aims to create a set of common APIs that will enable developers to write applications for a broad range of Web sites and services without any individual customization.

Queried by the Times, Yahoo offered no further detail on the rumor. “Yahoo has a rich history of supporting open standards, such as OpenID and Apache Hadoop, as we believe industry collaboration is beneficial to the developer community and the Web as a whole,” said a company spokeswoman. “While we are evaluating OpenSocial as an emerging standard, we do not comment on speculation or rumors.”

Anyway, if this particular rumor proves true, it’s potentially big news. As Forrester Research analyst Charlene Li notes, it “would mean that the site with the largest group of users, and with the largest base of registered users, would be joining OpenSocial.”