Microsoft made a 44.6 billion dollar offer for Yahoo! today. Yes, you heard right, 44.6 billion. My gut feeling is that Yahoo is going to take the money and ran. The offer represents a sweet deal for Yahoo. But the big winner will be Microsoft who has been trying to compete with Google and it’s search and ad business.

I don’t use Yahoo search and rely mostly on Google but what about Flickr and Del.icio.us which Yahoo purchased some time ago? I currently use both of those quite a bit and I’m trying to imagine those web based app’s infused with Microsoft. My guess is they’ll muck up all the originality of Yahoo and it won’t ever be the same again. Just a regurgitation of what Microsoft has already.