It appears Microsoft has been in discussions with Yahoo! for the past 18 months about a proposed $44.6 billion acquisition, which was just publicly announced by Steve Ballmer.
Perhaps this is Microsoft’s attempt to directly compete with the GOOG for search marketing revenue.
From Alec Saunders’ Microsoft & Yahoo post:

CFO Chris Liddell gave an […]

Microsoft is locked and loaded to launch a new VoIP Platform on October 16th. Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates and Business Division President Jeff Raikes are set to showcase several products, including OCS 2007, which promises to bring VoIP, presence, instant messaging and conferencing together; the Office Communicator 2007 unified communications client; Office Live Meeting 2007 […]

I spend a couple hours each day viewing various VoIP related sites to keep up on the state of the industry.
Just very recently I have been noticing a significant number of ads by Microsoft that promote the slogan “VoIP As You Are” and their own software-based VoIP PBX solution…naturally I was intrigued, so being […]