Microsoft bids $44.6 billion to buy Yahoo

In a bid to halt Google's growing dominance online, Microsoft has offered to buy struggling Internet giant Yahoo for $44.6 billion, an acquisition that would unite the world's most influential software company with the Web's most-trafficked site.

If approved by Yahoo's shareholders and by regulators, Microsoft's unsolicited offer would set up a titanic corporate struggle between Microsoft and Google for the patronage of millions of Internet users around the world.

Microsoft sells the operating systems and Web browser used on the vast majority of the world's computers. It was once feared as a near-monopoly with unbounded power over personal computing. But the proposed deal tacitly acknowledges that the software giant has failed to reinvent itself as computing shifts more online; instead, it is trying to buy its way into a stronger position. The proposed acquisition would give Microsoft access to Yahoo's 137 million monthly visitors and long reach into the lives of consumers in the online realm. There it would confront Google, which through its preeminent search engine now captures the biggest share of online-advertising money. It is also branching out in many directions at once, into office software, mobile phones and, through its purchase of YouTube, entertainment.