Yahoo! Inc. (YHOO) and Apple Inc. (AAPL): How Tangled Is This Going to Get?

Still, it’s likely there’s going to be one real winner in this dance of tech companies:Yahoo!. The others are all truly monstrous firms that won’t be made or broken by how their tablet and smartphone deals are structured. Yahoo!, on the other hand, needs all the help it can get.

Between the four companies, Yahoo!’s market cap ($26.24 billion) is little more than one-tenth the next smallest (Microsoft at $248.02 billion). Yahoo! has had a rough five years, but the market is beginning to believe in what Mayer is doing with the firm.

Over the last year, Yahoo! has outperformed the NASDAQ by a factor of 10, and there are signs — an operating margin of 11.34%, and a 65.66% net margin, for fiscal 2012 — that growth in share value could continue. Yahoo! looks like a better investment every day.

Good luck!

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More columns by Nate Wooley:

• Samsung, Best Buy Team to Fight Apple
• Does Privacy Threaten Tech Values?
• Microsoft Slaps the Facebook Phone; Apple, Google Smirk Quietly

Nate Wooley has no position in any stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool recommends Apple and Google. The Motley Fool owns shares of Apple, Google, and Microsoft.