GigaOM

Pundits have bemoaned the impact that Microsoft’s acquisition of Yahoo will have on Silicon Valley entrepreneurship: In eliminating a “big startup acquirer,” Redmond is slamming shut one, and possibly two, big windows for “VC-funded exits.” You’ll be happy to know that Marc vociferously disagrees…

I think that a Microsoft/Yahoo merger would have practically no impact on any high-quality Silicon Valley startup.

For starters, Marc argues that Yahoo, Microsoft and even Google haven’t been as acquisitive as VCs or entrepreneurs wax on about. Apart from a few huge deals (Microsoft’s aQuantive deal, or Google’s Doubleclick and Postini purchases) all three companies have mainly done a “small number of very small deals” to acquire engineers or products that weren’t even complete.

“[These are] not doubles or triples or even necessarily singles from the perspective of venture-funded Valley startups [so] taking Yahoo, or even Microsoft for that matter, out of the M&A races isn’t going to reduce the number of deals going down each year by very much.”

Translation: don’t worry. And now check out Marc’s giant list of all the other active players in Internet M&A — other potential partners for you to court , should Yahoo and Microsoft get lost in the weeds of their integration and become even less “active” (very likely, should the deal fly!):

* Akamai * Amazon * American Greetings * AOL * CBS * Cisco * CNet * Comcast * Digital River * Disney * eBay * Expedia * HP * IAC * Jupiter Media * Liberty Media * Marchex * MercadoLibre * Monster * Motricity * NBC Universal * New York Times * News Corp * Omniture * Priceline * Publicis * Real * Sabre * Scripps * Shutterfly * Sony * Valueclick * Viacom * WPP