The obligatory Yahoo - Microsoft post.

There have been more than enough people pontificating about the bid. Three things:

(i) The first information I had was an email alert, next word of mouth, Twitter 3rd - sorry Twitternuts, but its still faster if you are logged into Reuters etc than A Listers. (Context - among the amazing claims made for Twitter is that it moves news faster than all other known systems....)

(ii) Not quite sure why Microsoft bid so high as a first shot......interesting game theory*

(iii) An article by James Governor in Redmonk that caught my eye:

The context of the search is far more valuable than the search itself. I have spoken before about the via: via: economy - word of mouth referrals in the delicious age. That is what Microsoft is buying into and planning to build upon. They should obviously jump in for Twitter right now, but there you go.

We’re talking about declarative living and tag gardening. That’s what Microsoft is buying. The future.

I think GOOG is now likely to go in for Facebook and now we have a game on our hands.

Interesting re Context based search - 3 years ago people laughed at you if you said this, last year we built a context based Search engine to solve a BBC requirement and it was "new-fangled" (social search was "in"), and this year eeeeveryone knows that context based search is the way forward

As to GOOG buying Facebook in response to a YHOO/MSFT play - that doesn't make sense to me at all , sounds like M&A bingo. I must also admit to being totally in the dark re declarative living and tag gardening - sounds like Ideal Homes 2.0

*Update - looks like there may have been (may even still be) other bids floating around - still, going in high is...interesting.