Rumour mill: Microsoft gets a 25% stake of T-online

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There's a hot rumour going around in german and international sources: Deutsche Telekom is going to sell a 24,9% stake of their daughter T-Online, biggest ISP in Europe.

Factual background: Telekom is with some 67 Bill Euro deeply in the red. Some 15.000 people are expected to get fired. A possible Microsoft purchase would account for 3-4 Mill Euro.

Also Telekom Boss Ron Sommer and Microsoft's Steve Ballmer have been very very friendly as of lately, with new cooperations already settled.

Speculative background: To strengthen it's position in competition with AOL, MS could need a partnership with a really large access provider.