Recent news say, Microsoft has bid $44.6 billion to buy Yahoo in a combination of cash and stock.

This is quite a lot of money to say the least, but what would it mean for the market?

I really like Yahoo for their openness, and much dislike Microsoft for their closed nature. However, Microsoft have started to get a lot better these later years. Will this be their best move towards openness so far? If they keep Yahoo’s current strategy I think it is. But if they close it up, it will be very bad for the community.

Yahoo’s strategy seems to be: “If we provide good packages for free, cool stuff will happen”. This is very similar to google’s strategy, but it seems that Yahoo doesn’t have the cash flow to keep up with Google when buying cool ideas. Yahoo-Microsoft probably will if they work more towards openness and free.

What do you think?