BBC reports that Microsoft wants to purchase Yahoo. So is this the start of a major power move, where one family absorbs the other in an attempt to hit the big boss? (Sorry, just finished watching a bunch of Sopranos last night). Or is this just political posturing? If the merger goes through will it really mean anything to anyone? In my online world google is my search engine, and my online mail goes to gmail (though that's not a primary address). I have a yahoo account, and a hotmail account, but they were only really for getting access to downloads, or flickr, or something or other.

Microsoft has been putting lots of work into both hotmail and their Live.com search lately, so are they looking to replace them with the yahoo search and mail (both also (from what I've heard) updated and improved lately), or are they just looking to kill off Yahoo from the search engine market. Yahoo doesn't have online advertising (that I know of, feel free to correct me), but they do have things like Flickr.

Anyone out there have any thoughts? Or should I just keep an eye on the geek podcasts and news to see what the industry experts think?