Microsoft has made an unsolicited $44.6 billion bid for Yahoo. Here’s an extract from the offer letter:

I am writing on behalf of the Board of Directors of Microsoft to make a proposal for a business combination of Microsoft and Yahoo!. Under our proposal, Microsoft would acquire all of the outstanding shares of Yahoo! common stock for per share consideration of $31 based on Microsoft’s closing share price on January 31, 2008, payable in the form of $31 in cash or 0.9509 of a share of Microsoft common stock. Microsoft would provide each Yahoo! shareholder with the ability to choose whether to receive the consideration in cash or Microsoft common stock, subject to pro-ration so that in the aggregate one-half of the Yahoo! common shares will be exchanged for shares of Microsoft common stock and one-half of the Yahoo! common shares will be converted into the right to receive cash.

Source: TechCrunch.

I’m sure that’ll provoke some Anit-Trust/Monopoly investigations, but for those of us in the UK where Google has far too large a share of the search engine market it would be nice to see some effective competition to Google – which hopefully this would provide.

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