Wow, who saw this coming?

MSNBC reports that Microsoft has made a $44.6 billion takeover bid for its search rival Yahoo! Inc. Now why would Microsoft want to do something like that? To take on Google, of course!

Yahoo has been struggling as of late. Granted, both Yahoo and Microsoft are well behind Google in the search engine market; MSNBC reports that Google’s market share is in the neighborhood of 60%, while Yahoo and Microsoft have a combined 33% share.

Some questions naturally arise from this buyout proposal. Will regulators allow Microsoft to buy Yahoo without without messy antitrust issues? What will happen to MSN and Windows Live Search? Will this really do Microsoft any good in the end? And what about other Yahoo properties such as Flickr? Is Microsoft overpaying?

Me? I’d be surprised--nay, shocked!--if this deal goes through without Microsoft being forced to give up quite a bit. That is, if this deal goes through at all. Time wil tell. I’m sure we’ll have more to say about this proposed buyout in the coming days.

As of this writing, Google’s share price is down nearly 8%, Microsoft is down over 6%, and Yahoo is up nearly 86%.