Yahoo! may not be what it was a decade or so ago, but it’s still a pretty big name on this wonderful thing we call the WWW – not to mention one of the few major players from the pre-Dot Com Bust times that’s managed to keep its relevance to the present day (unlike, say, Lycos or Infoseek).

So Microsoft’s proposed buyout of the company is still pretty big news.

Word came out this morning that Billy’s boys are willing to pay $44.3M (US) for the struggling Internet giant, whose stock slipped to a four-year low earlier this week. The buyout works out to around $31/share, which is about 63% above current market value. Yahoo! is said to be “carefully” considering the offer.

If you were to ask me Microsoft’s intentions here, it strikes me as all going back to MS wanting to do whatever it can to destroy, or at least cripple, Google. A few months back we told the story of how former MS employees who were going on to work for Google were being given the perp-walk treatment right out the door, two-week notices and loose ends be damned. It all begins to paint a picture of MS gearing up to take on Google directly in the distributed-services arena, using Yahoo!’s greater inroads as the launching point.

Interesting times, indeed…

If you liked that, try...

1. Yahoo Podcasts Shutting Down
2. Windows Azure Announced
3. Microsoft: Vista will be deployed quickly!
4. Microsoft to Run PHP on .NET
5. Microsoft Forcing IE7 Update

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