There have been reports flying around Twitter and several prominent blogs that Twitter is making a move to acquire Summize, a popular Twitter search engine. In case this is the first you're hearing about Summize, here's a rundown of what it does. It can search Twitter for any string -- most importantly, an @name -- which makes it indispensable when Twitter's tracking function is down. Second, it aggregates and lists the most popular search terms, so you can get a sense of the Twitter zeitgeist.

It's too early to speculate about what effect the acquistion could have on Twitter itself, or how the resulting service would look with Summize's features integrated. We do love the idea of combining two services we use every day, though. Basically, we're keeping our fingers crossed that these rumors are true.

On Friday, we reported that Microsoft was attempting to acquire Yahoo, offering the company $44.6 billion for the takeover. Google isn't taking the new threat lightly, so Google's CEO Eric Schmidt called Yahoo's CEO Jerry Yang on Sunday. Schmidt offered any help he could in order to prevent the buyout. But it's possible this may be a ploy by Yahoo to get Microsoft to raise the bidding price.

The controversy behind the buyout partially stems from the fear that such a move would destroy Google and all other competitors in the long run. Microsoft used a similar method to get Windows users to use Internet explorer instead of Netscape, but Google's destruction may not be Microsoft's intent. Disagreeing with critics, Microsoft says the takeover would create a solid second-place competitor in the Internet search market.

Though we can't predict the future, it's clear Yahoo won't be alone in the future. The question now is: what will Yahoo's future name be? Yahoogle or Microshoo?

No, that headline wasn't a mis-print, and those year-old rumors we reported are turning out to be true: Microsoft has asked Yahoo! to resume acquisition talks, and this time the big shiny number is a whopping $50 billion. Redmond must not have been too happy with losing that battle for DoubleClick to Google, as Mashable is reporting that combining both advertising and search powers with Yahoo! are major motivators for rekindling the talks. With a roughly estimated value of $40 billion, Microsoft (worth $280 billion, by comparison) sounds pretty intent on landing a deal. On the other hand, anit-trust concerns could make matters more interesting, though we're a long ways off from that stage of a purchase as significant as this.

From the holy grail perspective of search market share, this buyout would give Microsoft around 27% of the market, versus Google's 65%; not a bad leap ahead, but still a costly one. Something that hasn't been mentioned so far is the fate of MSN and Microsoft's recently revamped Live services; a company only needs so many portals, online services and communities, and it would only make sense that at least some of these properties would be assimilated or de-commissioned if the buyout went down.

A lot of speculation is to be done over a proposal this monumental. But first, we'll have to wait and see if Yahoo! is actually interested.

It appears that Napster might be ready to say uncle, ZDNet is reporting. The company has stated they "do not have our heads in the sand regarding an M&A (merger and acquisition) transaction", which is more or less a nice way of saying they just might be licked. Over the march quarter their 512,000 strong subscriber base fell 7 percent as they transitioned to its free website model, but excluding 4,000 university subscriptions, their number of paid subscribers actually grew 26 percent year-over-year.

An analyst from Stifel Nicolaus & Co also cited in ZDNet's article said "Napster's still trying to find a working business model, which is bad from an operating standpoint", also noting that they see an increased likelihood that the company would sell, especially since the possibility came straight down from management.

Either way, things don't sound so good for the renegade-come-legit digital music service. Also of note is their website; it might be the fact that I'm on a Mac, but their site seems dishearteningly bare these days. not even a remnant of the hip Flash site they built when they offered the web-based free model. I guess time will tell what happens to the music libraries of all those subscribing users.

[via iLounge]

Today Microsoft announced that it has acquired Winternals Software, maker of data recovery and protections software, as well as free Windows utility site Sysinternals. The acquisition will include Mark Russinovich, Winternals and Sysinternals founder, who will come to Microsoft as a Technical Fellow, Microsoft's title for "someone whose technical vision, expertise, and world-class leadership is widely recognized." The Winternals web site has a short FAQ about the acquisition, which says Microsoft will be integrating Winternals' technologies into its products, and Russinovich has made a post to his Sysinternals blog which says Sysinternals "will remain for the time being while Microsoft determines the best way to integrate it into its own community efforts, and the tools will continue to be free to download."