Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer sent a letter on Saturday to the Yahoo! board of directors giving them a deadline of three weeks to conclude a takeover agreement. In the letter Ballmer states “If we have not concluded an agreement within the next three weeks, we will be compelled to take our case directly to your shareholders, including the initiation of a proxy contest to elect an alternative slate of directors for the Yahoo! board.”

Some good insight into Google’s cellphone plans this week from Kevin Maney at Portfolio and Saul Hansell at The New York Times.
Writing about a recent interview he had with Motorolo CEO Ed Zander, Maney pointed out that Zander and Google CEO Eric Schmidt once worked together at Sun Microsystems.
“Zander was never direct about it, but […]

Sources are telling Business Week that Apple is considering bidding for valuable wireless spectrum in the government auction early next year.
That’s the same auction in which Google has said it will likely participate.
Even more reason to suspect that the two tech powerhouses are in cahoots on a mobile platform project.

Bill Gates still says he is stepping away from the operations of Microsoft next year, as planned. But his competitive fire hasn’t dimmed.
He didn’t miss an opportunity to gig Google in a recent interview with John Markoff of The New York Times.
“How many products, of all the Google products that have been introduced, how many […]