New York Times: Google, highflying Silicon Valley Web search company, recently began holding meetings with bankers in preparation for its highly anticipated initial public offering as it still engaged in meetings exploring partnership or even merger with Microsoft; Microsoft, desperate to capture part of popular and ad-generating search business, approached Google within last two months to discuss options, including possibility of takeover; overture demonstrates enormous importance that Google represents as both competitive threat to Microsoft and as Silicon Valley's latest hope for new financial boom.

It will be very interesting to see how Google's stakeholders respond to this partnership (or takeover) offer. I personally would sell the company (yea, $15 billion is a lot of money!), create 500 little companies and invest $20 Million in each and enjoy my life with the remaining $5 billion (or perhaps buy a couple of small countries with the change)!

It's gonna be a very sweet time for Google employees anyways, since they're about to go IPO in a few months according to Google executives. They talked to investment bankers last week to make the company public in a 4-6 month timeframe.

In August, Microsoft dumped LookSmart and looked at building its own search engine to rival Google. In the interim, Overture is providing paid search listings for MSN's portal until 2005.