Maybe you are giving MS too much credit... (Score 3, Interesting)

it is possible that Microsoft wants to buy Google not because it wants to reduce Linux hits, rather the MSN search engine just isn't very good.

Here are the results for different OSes:

OS: Google vs. MSN

aix: 3,550,000 vs. 40

solaris: 8,340,000 vs. 87

tru64: 676,000 vs. 93,433

hp-ux: 1,890,000 vs. 287,294

ms windows: 6,650,000 vs. 291

vms: 1,770,000 vs. 22

os2: 702,000 vs. 118,273

linux: 96,800,000 vs. 365

freebsd: 8,810,000 vs. 1,136,552

openbsd: 3,500,000 vs. 341,343

netbsd: 4,750,000 vs. 223,075

unix: 23,700,000 vs. 164

symbian: 1,400,000 vs. 420,701

"windows 2000": 6,750,000 vs. 315

"windows xp": 970,000 vs. 297

"windows server 2003": 4,170,000 vs. 30