Microsoft said Friday that it is making an unsolicited offer of $31 a share, or $44.6 billion, to buy Yahoo in a move that would give the software giant more market share and become a significant threat to Google.

In a statement, Microsoft would allow Yahoo shareholders to get cash or shares of Microsoft. At a 62 percent premium to Yahoo’s closing price of $19.18 the deal would seem like a no brainer for suffering Yahoo shareholders. Yahoo said it will evaluate the offer "carefully and promptly."

A combination of Microsoft and Yahoo could reshape the Internet landscape for millions of Web users: Would the two companies join their online portals? Could they rethink the desktop computer to integrate Web content more directly? The changes are potentially huge, but probably not in the short term.

Microsoft executives did not indicate Friday exactly what they would do with Yahoo’s brand if their $45 million bid is accepted. But analysts expect the combined companies to preserve many of their separate free services, like instant messaging and email programs.

U.S. and European antitrust regulators aren’t likely to prevent Microsoft from buying Yahoo, analysts said Friday, though scrutiny of the deal could drag on for months.

A major factor weighing in Microsoft Corp.’s favor, analysts said, is Google Inc.’s dominance in the online search and advertising businesses–the two areas regulators are likely to focus on when weighing market power issues raised by the nearly $45 billion unsolicited bid.

Anti-Scientology agitators have repeatedly harassed and threatened violence against a 59-year-old PG&E worker and his wife, who were mistakenly flagged as pro-Scientology hackers.

John Lawson, who lives in Stockton, California with his wife Julia, began receiving threatening phone calls around 2 a.m. Saturday morning. He didn’t know why until THREAT LEVEL explained that a hacking group calling itself the g00ns (goons spelled with zeros, not goons with the letter o) posted his home address, phone number and cell numbers, as well as Julia’s Social Security number, online. The obscene and threatening calls have continued through Tuesday, according to Lawson.

Gartner has highlighted 10 key predictions of events and developments that will affect IT and business in 2008 and beyond. The predictions highlight areas where executives and IT professionals need to take action in 2008. The full impact of these trends may not appear this year, but executives need to act now so that they can exploit the trends for their competitive advantage.

These predictions are selected from more than 100 predictions that Gartner presents and reviews every year. These predictions focus on general technology areas rather than on specific industries or roles.

In 2004, Nicholas Carr created a few waves–drawing the ire of IT professionals and striking fear into the heart of CEOs and CFOs–when he wrote the book "Does IT Matter?" In it, he reasons that IT had become a commodity, offering companies little strategic advantage because as soon as one company adopts a new technology, its competitors do the same.

In 2008, Carr is back again with his new book, "The Big Switch: Rewiring the World from Edison to Google," this time predicting the demise of corporate IT departments, to be replaced by utility computing.

There was a lot on IBM’s plate in 2007–some 12 acquisitions company officials said worth more than $6 billion. Among those was the deal for Consul Risk Management, which IBM closed on last January for an undisclosed amount.

The acquisition was meant to bolster IBM’s security portfolio by adding data governance and compliance monitoring, auditing and reporting capabilities across mainframe and distributed environments. A year later, the integration of the two companies has yielded positive results, as the company bested its expected sales goals of Consul technology by more than 200 percent.

The United States, Sweden, and Japan topped a new ranking that measures how well countries use telecommunications technologies–networks, cell phones, and computers–to boost their social and economic prosperity.

Connectivity Scorecard, created by London Business School professor Leonard Waverman and published on Wednesday, measured countries on about 30 indicators, including usage of communications technology.

IBM has added a new capability to its virtualization platform that will allow Linux applications to run on IBM’s Unix servers, the company announced Tuesday. The "Lx86" capability, to be included in IBM’s PowerVM virtualization software, allows x86-based Linux applications to run on IBM’s System p and Power-based Unix systems without modification, according to IBM. The systems will automatically detect and run Linux-based binaries designed for x86 environments.

The Chinese Year of the Rat begins next week. In the cyberunderground, it is already shaping up to be the Year of the Clever Rat, as crooks scurry to perfect ways to steal data and commit fraud.

One pioneering gang is taking over home network routers instead of PC hard drives, a sneakier way to hijack online accounts. Another has perfected a way to use compromised PCs to repeatedly click on Internet ads to generate ad payments to the crooks.

Phishing specialists are putting finer touches on scams to trick people into divulging sensitive personal data on fake Web pages. Meanwhile, top-level crime rings are getting stealthier and more efficient at herding millions of compromised PCs, referred to as bots, into networks that they deploy to steal data, commit extortion and spread spam.