I am deep in the throes of final preparation for what I hope will be an awesome event next week - SugarCon.

But I wanted to take a moment and think about Microsoft’s bid for Yahoo!  No, I don’t think it will “beat Google”  or really make any changes in the way Yahoo! operates. But, Yahoo!’s use of PHP and other open source elements will hopefully seep upwards into the development minds at Redmond and will hopefully have a positive impact on Microsoft as a whole.

And as Microsoft readies for a heavy web-apps play with the whole Live series of offerings, it could do well to learn from Yahoo! (even if its offer is not realized). While I have been annoyed with Yahoo! in the past, they have a pretty strong web infrastructure - scalable and reliable. And that is thanks in a large part to open source components.

So, indirectly, we are seeing yet another open source M&A play in the works…