Huge news on the market! Microsoft has made an official bid to buy the giant Yahoo. Competing with Google Inc. isn’t so funny lately. Google has acquired so many online services that Microsoft and Yahoo remained far behind. Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer said the company will bid $31 per share, the total offer reaching the amazing amount of $44.6 billion.

Yahoo has received an official letter with the proposed deal, making its share price go up 54 percent in premarket trading. If the Yahoo board accepts the transaction, the shareholders could choose to receive cash or Microsoft common shares, with the total purchase consisting of 50 percent each cash and stock.

According to the letter, Ballmer made a proposal last year, but Yahoo board’s felt it was not the right time. They believed in the success “on a reformulated strategy based on certain operational initiatives, such as Project Panama, and a significant organizational realignment.” Unfortunately, nothing changed since last year and Yahoo might go for the deal. The Chief Executive Jerry Yang said this week the company will cut 1,000 jobs, or 7 percent of its work force, in an effort to cut costs.

Mozilla’s VP of Engineerring, Mike Schroepfer, announced that with all these developments on mobile phones nowadays it’s time for Mozilla to go mobile with “no compromise” to security or other issues. Firefox is the world’s most popular open-source browser and with a market of 20 mobile devices to outnumber 1 computer I think they will do good.

First Mozilla needs to finish developing Firefox 3 before they release the mobile version that will be able to run Firefox extensions and allow people to build rich applications via XUL. Two new people have been accounted in the team: Christian Sejersen, head of browsers at Openwave (NSDQ: OPWV) and Brad Lassey which moved from France Telecom (NYSE: FTE) R&D.

To make sure it’s clear here’s what Mike Schroepfer said:

* Mozilla will add mobile devices to the first class/tier-1 platform set for Mozilla2. This means we will make core platform decisions with mobile devices as first-class citizens.

* We will ship a version of “Mobile Firefox” which can, among other things, run Firefox extensions on mobile devices and allow others to build rich applications via XUL.

BT Group, formerly British Telecommunications, plans to persuade its British customers to turn their home wireless “hubs” into public hotspots. Succeeding in this plan, BT will be able to compete with the mobile phones operators to deliver Internet services on the go.

There are around 10,000 to 11,000 hotspots in the country. Increasing the number for a nation-wide network would boost the sales for BT’s Fusion phone that supports fixed-line telephony, mobile networks and of course supports wireless connections. For the customers will be great benefits as they will make cheaper calls over the Wi-Fi connection. Also, BT’s Broadband costumers who would participate at the project will have free access to the network across the country.

“It won’t take over overnight, but over time wi-fi will chip away at the mobile network,” said Gavin Patterson, BT’s managing director for consumer operations.

Already important investors like Google and Skype expressed their intention to collaborate for the project. Although BT’s plan seems very good, I tend to think it will be developed only in the big cities, at least in the next five years. First of all, not everybody will share the connection (security issues, connection speed problems etc.). Secondly, the costs to maintain such an infrastructure are too big. I am not a pessimist, but I am a little reserved about its success.

via Yahoo News