You may not have heard about the acquisition story of the year (so far), so let me give you an update, in my favorite “laymanese” languages.

Back in late January, mega-corporation and software giant Microsoft placed a bid to buy everything Yahoo!, the online search company dealing in many facets of the online communities existing today. The bid was priced at $44.6 billion (huzzah!) and Microsoft patiently waited for Yahoo! to bite.

Yahoo! didn’t. In reply, Yahoo! said it was worth more, estimating a $5 billion inscrease for the company’s worth. Microsoft gawked and held fast to it’s original bid.

After several weeks of analysts puring over the possible merger, Yahoo! defiantly shouted “No!” again and again at Microsoft.

So this month Microsoft finally backed off from the deal, withdrawing it’s bid. However, many in the tech news industry speculate Microsoft may still take more hostile actions to aquire Yahoo! any way possible.

In my opinion, if Microsoft were to aquire Yahoo! and it’s retained brands such as Flickr, Yahoo! Mail, Geocities, etc., Microsoft will have its hands in many more properties than it can handle at this point. Microsoft seems to be losing focus in every one of its properties and failing to perfect the ones the company relies upon to survive. Windows Vista is a very good example of this, and yet Microsoft would rather dabble in the venues of online advertising, search and community than improve upon its best franchise.

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