By now, everyone's heard of Microsoft's $44.6bn bid for Yahoo! and everyone's talked about it as well, though Yahoo! isn't saying much for the time being.

Here, in my opinion, are some of the most interesting articles currently published on this topic:

• To start us off, there's Long Zheng's side-by-side comparison of the services that each firm offers: Microsoft + Yahoo = Big Mess?
• And then there's The Kelsey Group's Peter Krasilovsky's article, MS & Yahoo!, that discusses the proposed acquisition from a number of angles
• Louise Story from the New York Times argues that this deal will be good for the industry: Deal That May Create More, Not Less, Competition
• But Robery X. Cringley (writing in InfoWorld) thinks it's going to be one big mess: MicroYahoo: A Marriage Made in Heck 
• As does Scott Rosenberg:  Microsoft Plus Yahoo? The sum is less than the parts
• Paul Kedrosky, on the other hand, thinks that Yahoo! should take the deal since it makes a lot of business sense: Yahoo: Finally Catches a Bid. Deal is Done. -- even though he argues it won't make too much of a difference to either of them
• Finally, skipping a lot (and I mean a lot) of other articles on this topic, the last one -- and I've been saving the best for last -- is Paul Thurrott's analysis of the offer: Microsoft + Yahoo? An Analysis of Microsoft's Blockbuster Offer for Yahoo

In fact, if you're only going to read one article on this topic, read Thurrott's. Though it would be good if you checked out the comparison table in Zheng's article as well.

Finally, in light of all this merger talk, check out Josh Lowensohn's article on Dot-com pioneers -- where are they now?. It makes and interesting read.