Update:
Charlene Li of Forrester provides an analysys.
Yup. Microsoft is currently in merger talks with Yahoo! as I write this. So we could potentially have MicroHoo! and my guess is that Google is watching this closely. This is a bit out of my territory so I really don't have a POV on this other than to offer the following observation:
I recently watched an interview with Lee Iacocca who was discussing his new book "Where Have All the Leaders Gone?" In the interview Iacocca says that his biggest regret was putting a successor in place who would then architect the Daimler-Chrysler merger. I'm not a businessman, so I don't know if this merger was a good business move or not, but I do find it interesting that as Iacocca examines his legacy—he offers this up as possibly his biggest regret in life.
Well, I guess we'll have to see where this all goes.