Sorry for that little pun in the title…I just couldn't resist.  I caught this one on Boston.com today.

An ebullient Steve Ballmer, president and chief executive of Microsoft Corp., said yesterday that his company is "hell-bent and determined" to challenge Google Inc. for leadership in the Internet search business.

"It'll be a lot of fun for the rest of you to watch," Ballmer shouted to the delight of several hundred guests at a meeting of the Massachusetts Software Council in Boston.

I'm with Ballmer…for better or for worse this is going to be fun to watch.  One giant going after another.  The funny thing is that it seems like Yahoo has all but become irrelevant in this game.  That said, I have loads of faith in the folks at Yahoo…they'll figure it out.  If you consider that search is the next frontier waiting to be fully developed than having Microsoft, Google and Yahoo battle it can only lead to new innovations and value add services. 

Meanwhile, Ballmer left no doubt that Microsoft has targeted Internet search services for the kind of all-out competitive push that the company once used to seize dominance in Web browser software. Despite Google's popularity, "the search market is still quite fragmented," Ballmer said, and existing tools still generate lots of useless results. Ballmer said Microsoft plans to invent new search technology that will change this, and make life more difficult for Google and other rivals

Unless….unless Microsoft's vision for better, faster and more accurate search assimilates us further into Microsoft technologies… and who better to defragment the "fragmented" search market but Microsoft.   Worst comes to worst Microsoft can just pony but a few billion bucks and buy Google.  Muuuuaahhhhahahahaha!!!