And, of course, it's becoming an increasingly successful strategy to identify your company's core competency and outsource everything else. It makes perfect sense for just about every company, large or small, to outsource their IT; if this kind of technology helps with that, it will only help business.

__________________
When they come a wull staun ma groon
Staun ma groon al nae be afraid
Thoughts awe hame tak awa ma fear
Sweat an bluid hide ma veil awe tears

Let me refocus my point here:

What I'm saying is that, I don't see a Microsoft acquisition of Yahoo facilitating some sort of "Microsoft Everything" future that wouldn't exist without the acquisition of Yahoo. I don't think it's a big deal - no more than when some larger company has scarfed up sites like youtube, facebook, or myspace. I'd be more concerned if Microsoft were buying things like AT&T or Comcast.

__________________
"Government big enough to supply everything you need is big enough to take everything you have... The course of history shows that as a government grows, liberty decreases."

-Thomas Jefferson

I don't know what ya'll think of the merger scenario but here's some polling on it:

Rasmussen Reports™: The most comprehensive public opinion coverage ever provided for a presidential election.

It shows a little bit of a down trend in Yahoo's approval rating and Google seems very popular....not much data on MS but Gates is eternally loved by their polling (I can link to it if anyone is interested).

I personally think it is certainly an attempt by Microsoft to get into the market that Google is dominating. Whether it will go somewhere (as their gaming attempt hasn't so far, especially when you look at global numbers, machines, users, etc), is anyone's guess, they certainly have the money and some of the programmers to make an attempt.

Microsoft needs more than Yahoo's web search business and portal to compete, they also need a betterstrategy in that market.