News on the grapevine – Microsoft have officially entered a bid to purchase Yahoo for $44.6 billion. Firstly, that is a sickening amount of money. Secondly, this seems another attempt to monopolise another market.

I understand the computer world was Microsoft’s upbringing – it’s home territory. Over the past few years it’s managed to wrestle it’s way in to the console market and is currently doing very well. While Sony are on their feet with the PS3 (and don’t argue with me because they are), the only capable opponents to Microsoft’s XBOX 360 are Nintendo – age old veterans of the video-game market. I do like the Wii.

And regardless of the constant presence of Mac and Linux, Windows still completely dominates the OS market (thank you Dell). Even with the eventual release of Vista after countless RC’s, it’s still… well, Windows. Keep at it Apple!

Now I don’t dislike Microsoft by any means, they’ve provided me with ‘Pinball’, Office and something I’ve grown especially fond of recently – Live Writer. It does, however, annoy me when they use their immense dominance and finance to force their way into a market.

If we look at the top search engines, and people will claim there are many more, but let’s face it – the top 4, the behemoths of the Internet search, are Google, MSN, Yahoo and you may debate the fourth between Ask, Technorati and AOL. So do the maths – Microsoft eats up Yahoo, which in terms of the search engine world will put it in direct competition with Google, who I like. Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer claims “By combining the assets of Microsoft and Yahoo we can offer a more competitive choice for consumers, advertisers and publishers.” This could be true, I personally can’t quite see a drastic change.

This is Microsoft trying to monopolise the SE market, this could be a good thing – it may light a fire under Google and spark some interesting new developments in Internet Search. Or it might just be another big-name transfer that has little effect. Like most of the players in Premiership Football. I better be careful what I say!

Personally, I think this could be a good thing, only if it pushes both major competitors to develop new technologies and algorithms to better the user experience of searching on the Internet. But who knows, they might not even win the bid!