Microsoft is reportedly pursuing  Yahoo!,  to better position itself against arch rival and ruler of the search universe, Google.

According to anonymous sources (hey, they don't want to get sued for letting the cat out of the bag),Microsoft asked that Yahoo! enter into negotiations for an acquisition that could be worth $50 billion.

Yahoo's market capitalization was about $38 billion as of May 3.

Charlene Li, principal analyst at Forrester Research, noted "On paper, the deal makes sense. But in the end it's going to be so hard that I don't think it will happen."

She's probably right. I have to suspect that Yahoo! wants nothing to do with any proposal that includes them being gobbled up by Microsoft. But a partnership might be a whole different matter.

"Given the messiness of a full-out merger — and also the limited benefit it would bring to Yahoo — I believe that a merger won't be in the works anytime soon,” Ms. Li added.

“More logical would be partnership agreements where the strengths of each company are shared. These tentative first steps to a merger would make a lot more sense, giving both companies the ability to ‘test the waters’ before jumping into the deep end."

Microsoft, which remains a distant third to both Google and Yahoo! in the search engine market, is under increasing pressure to compete with Google.

Plus, Microsoft may be looking over its shoulder at Google' office applications. There' s still suspicions that once Google feels they've got all the products right, i.e., superior to Microsoft's line of office products, Google will move aggressively into that arena.

Microsoft considers itself a rival to Google in search marketing, but given Google's dominance (routinely around 50% of the search market) and the fact that Microsoft is often at less than 10% of the search market, is it a rivalry?

I'm waiting for Google to print up t-shirts like my alma mater, Texas Tech, had a few years ago. Tech has dominated Texas A&M on the football front for some 13 years now, leading an enterprising Tech fan to create a t-shirt emblazoned with--

"You Call it a Rivalry. We Call it Domination."

Maybe Google should print some up and send them to Microsoft.