Yahoo! mulling major stake in Dailymotion

The Wall Street Journal on Tuesday reported that Yahoo! may take a controlling interest in France-based online video-sharing website Dailymotion.

Yahoo! could buy as much as 75 percent of Dailymotion from France Telecom in what would be the California Internet pioneer's biggest acquisition under chief Marissa Mayer, according to the Journal.

Mayer said at a recent financial analysts conference in San Francisco that she was making a priority of markets outside the United States, where the company makes most of its money.

Yahoo! and Dailymotion declined to comment on the report that talks between the companies were underway.

Dailymotion is a YouTube-style venue that industry tracker comScore rated at the start of this year as the 12th largest video-sharing website with about 116 million users. Dailymotion had an estimated value of $300 million.

Mayer took over in at Yahoo! in July of last year after 13 years at Google, having been hired as the 20th employee and first woman engineer at the company that went on to be the new king of Internet search.

Mayer joined Yahoo! as the fifth chief executive there in as many years, as the struggling Internet search pioneer tries to reinvent itself as a "premier digital media" company after withering in Google's shadow.

Mayer has echoed the mantra of predecessors who maintained that the company could find prosperity by mining information about users to insightfully tailor online content and target money-making advertising.