This tells you how much Microsoft fears Google.  And they are right to be scared.

MSN apparently bid 62% over the current stock price.  If this goes through it will be serious competition for Google.

I like that decision, since it will reduce my advertising to just two money hungry mega-companies.

I was in the software industry for years and worked with Microsoft on a few products.  Microsoft buys companies, takes a few good engineers and the company/branding/product essentially dies.  The model is the same whether it is a company of 20 or 20,000.  I agree with John that this is Microsoft admitting that they are very fearful of Google and trying to flex it's muscle.  I find it interesting that many people are equating Microsoft with MSN.  MSN is small piece of Microsoft.  Yes, it is the arm that competes with directly with Google, Yahoo and AOL.  However, Google has gone far beyond Yahoo or AOL in expanding capabilities to go after Microsoft's core office products. Maybe someday Google will create an OS so we don't need to use Vista anymore!