Tech Rumor: Yahoo! Selling Zimbra?

SUNNYVALE, Calif. (TheStreet) -- Yahoo! (YHOO) looks to be shedding Zimbra as part of a long-anticipated strategy to focus on its core Internet businesses.

Yahoo! CEO Carol Bartz may have convinced VMware (VMW) to buy the Web-based business-email service, according to BoomTown blogger Kara Swisher, who cites several sources close to the situation.

VMware might be interested in the so-called collaborative services that Zimbra offers like office calendars and document sharing, according to the blog post.

If true, it would be one of the biggest signs yet that Bartz is carving off ventures that previous management felt it needed to compete with Google (GOOG). Yahoo! bought Zimbra, an up-and-coming email player, for $350 million in 2007.

Bartz has yet to deliver on her plan to strengthen the good parts of Yahoo! and ditch the businesses that have been a distraction. In September, the company sold its stake in China's Alibaba.com for about $150 million.

Meanwhile, Yahoo! continues to fall behind Google and Microsoft's (MSFT) Bing in the search business sector. And Yahoo's mobile strategy continues to sputter as Google's Android effort gains momentum.

Yahoo! shares were up 2% to $17.07 late Monday.

-- Written by Scott Moritz in New York

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