Just to set some additional context, here are: a description of the book by Gerard K. O'Neill, endorsement by the Space Frontier Foundation, and the current downloadable demo versions for Mac OS X and Windows. With 58 hours left, the KickStarter campaign has now raised $11,016, putting it half-way toward committing to a Linux version.

This acquisition may in fact be in the best interest of Yahoo! shareholders, given the premium. But I'm pretty sure it's not in the long-term interest of consumers at large. They will be given a more monolithic, more complex, more buggy platform which fewer and fewer innovators will be able to compete with.

Regulators may think that Microsoft does not dominate in search and on-line advertising, but this would simply bolster the Windows monopoly. By the time regulators figure out that something is amiss, it will take years and many more decimated corporate entities to get it fixed.