Microsoft is in talks with French telecom company Orange about a partnership involving Dailymotion — an online video portal in which Yahoo nearly bought a controlling stake last year. As the Wall Street Journal reports, Orange CEO Stéphane Richard revealed that talks were ongoing today in an interview on French television, though he acknowledged that the proposed deal remains uncertain.

"This doesn't mean that we will reach an agreement," Richard said in the interview, which aired on BFMTV. He added that any deal with Microsoft would be primarily "industrial," and that Orange would likely retain a majority stake in Paris-based Dailymotion, which was founded in 2005. Yahoo bid for a controlling stake in Dailymotion last year, but the deal was ultimately blocked by the French government, which is a minority owner of France Telecom-Orange. Orange has in the past been keen to expand Dailymotion to the US market, in a bid to challenge YouTube.