Full story: Microsoft targets Yahoo! with $44.6bn bid

When it came, the response was rapid and voluminous.

This morning, just before the markets opened in the US, Microsoft posted a message on its website advising the world of the $44.6 billion offer it intended to make for Yahoo!

Within minutes, tech bloggers - excitable at the most uneventful of times - began to pick apart the implications of a gigantic deal that had been rumoured for more than a year. By lunchtime, a search for 'Microsoft Yahoo' on the monitoring site Technorati threw up 51,000 results.

There were rapid enthusiasts, doubters - and those who seemed keener to hedge their bets. Most of all, though, there was genuine, untrammelled amazement at what would, if it went through, be the largest merger in the technology sector's history.

TechCrunch, the respected blog, led the wave of disbelief. "WOW," Duncan Riley wrote, before jumping to the conclusion that many others would go on to draw: "Microsoft + Yahoo = a stronger competitor to the Google borg."

"Microsoft's proposal to acquire Yahoo! must look like a godsend for Yahoo!'s beleaguered shareholders," Max Bleyleben wrote on the blog Technofile Europe. "The timing is perfect, cruel but fair. Yahoo! will find it difficult to resist." (Early signs suggested the market agreed. Yahoo! shares shot up by 57 per cent shortly after the bid was made public.)

Over at Engadget, the tone was more mischievous. It was soon running a poll which asked readers to vote on what the proposed combined entity should be called. Among the options were: "Microsoft!" - Yahoo! being respresented only by its trademark exclamation mark - "Microhoo", "Yacrosoft", and finally: "Microsoft, this ain't no merger of equals."

Gizmodo, another gadget blog, said: "It seems that Bill is going to eat more than one burger before he leaves Microsoft" - a reference to the Bill Gates' announcement that he will step down as chairman of Microsoft later this year.

Craig Danuloff - on the blog Commerce 360 - spoke for many when he said that increased competition in the internet advertising market - in the form of a company that could finally take on Google - would be a good thing, adding that while he had a "general distaste for Microsoft" he was "all for" the deal. "I never thought I'd be hoping Microsoft aggressively join any market, but I am," he wrote.

MikeT at Code Monkey Ramblings, meanwhile, wasn't so sure: "Microsoft will keep losing to Google until the day that they can hire away a few Google insiders and give them the freedom and cash to build better search software," he wrote.

Mark Evans, a Canadian blogger, was more interested that coverage of the deal on the deal would be even more generous than might have been expected because of the fact that a big snowstorm was blanketing the north-east coast of the US. "All those reporters and bloggers will have nothing to do but drink coffee and pound out copy."

One of the more measured comments came from John Maloney, on the blog Digital Edge, who wrote: "There are real cultural differences between the two organizations that will need to be worked out. The suite of services being offered - especially around search and advertising - will need to be rationalized.

"Keeping talent on board throughout the organization - not just in the management suite - will also be a challenge. But despite the obvious hurdles to getting a deal like this done, the combination of Yahoo!’s web-centric assets with Microsoft’s massive structural advantages is incredibly compelling."

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