The big Yahoo! shareholders have now gone public saying they disagreed with Yahoo!’s decision to reject the Microsoft offer; and that they would accept Microsoft’s offer (or something close) to buy the company if they came back to the table.

However, to have a chance of making this happen, I suspect Jerry Yang has to pick up the phone and call Steve Ballmer (if it was a negotiating tactic, Ballmer’s decision to walk away means that he might not come back to the table unless he’s invited to). Not sure Jerry sounds like he’s in the frame of mind to do that. He seems to think that Microsoft should call him if they have something to say. So, it might take some more shareholder pressure to get him to make that call…

It’s a difficult to predict if a deal will go through now. I suspect it depends on whether Yahoo!’s shareholders decide to play hardball with Yahoo!’s Board or not.