Word is spreading tonight that Konfabulator developer Pixoria has been purchased by Yahoo! Inc. Konfabulator is a widget engine many speculate to be the inspiration for the Dashboard feature in Mac OS X Tiger.

The Mac Observer has a more in-depth article about the aquisition and Yahoo!’s plans for Konfabulator:

Yahoo is hoping widgets will entice computer users to look at small snippets of content and then click through to more content on its Web pages, thereby selling more advertisements. Yahoo is also hoping it widgets will help increase its current base of 10.1 million subscribers who pay for premium services.

UPDATE: Konfabulator is now available as a free download for both OSX and Windows