The Yahoo-acquisition guessing game is underway, and one big name has been crossed off the list

Julie Jacobson/AP

Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer.

Big media and communications companies, as well as private-equity firms, are the primary suspects. Verizon, AT&T, News Corp., Disney, and Comcast have all been mentioned as potential bidders in previous reports.

And we'll likely get more leaked details about suitors and proposals in the coming weeks.

But it looks like News Corp., which was previously cited in several media reports, can be crossed off the list. The media giant, which owns the Dow Jones news service and the New York Post, has no interest in Yahoo, according to a source familiar with the matter.

Comcast also seems out of the race, as its CEO Brian Roberts hinted during Wednesday's earnings call that there's probably no imminent acquisitions planned at this point.

"...I sit there and look at those scenarios and many others that have been suggested and there's nothing we feel we have to do...our plan of record in 2016 is to execute on a business plan, stay focused, and I don't feel the need that we need to go and change the face of our company," Roberts said.

Verizon has remained silent so far, despite its CEO hinting at his interest in a possible deal. At Business Insider's IGNITION conference in December, Verizon CEO Lowell McAdam said that if "it turned out that parts of it, or all of it were for sale, we'd look at it like anything in the digital media area at this point, because it's so hot."

According to the Financial Times, several private equity firms, including Bain and TPG, are interested in Yahoo's core business. Jim Coulter, the co-CEO of TPG, was cagey when asked about Yahoo by Bloomberg's Emily Chang earlier on Wednesday:

According to a note by RBC Capital Markets, the list of buyers could get longer if Yahoo decided to break up its core business into smaller pieces, since the deal size would decrease.

"Given our base case does not value any individual display asset over $700M, a much wider range of companies can be bidders for YHOO's individual properties," RBC's note said.

But that may not be a choice because splitting up Yahoo's core would make it too complicated and not command the same type of multiple Yahoo wants out of the deal.

"Most likely the whole core [will be sold] because it's too hard to split out the various verticals," SunTrust analyst Robert Peck told us last month.