This morning it’s being reported widely that Microsoft has offered $44.6B to purchase Yahoo, a 62% premium over Yahoo’s closing price yesterday. Yahoo, a leading destination site for web surfers for over a decade has been struggling in recent years with the ascendancy of Google in particular. Yahoo maintains a strong brand and is the #1 (reported by Alexa) website based on reach per day in the world – in other words, huge numbers of eyeballs. Microsoft is working diligently to diversify and while it has made some progress on the Internet front with MSN et al, it still languishes behind the leaders. Should this deal be consummated, the resulting entity would be a force to be reckoned with if the integration goes well.

It’s big, it’s expensive, and it’s been a persistent rumor over the last few years. We’ll see how it shakes out, generally, I’m not a fan of the mega-deal, they’re too big to integrate quickly and often there is a cultural mismatch that denies the natural synergies to be realized.