Microsoft has agreed to acquire corporate virtualization specialist Kidaro for an undisclosed amount — though we hear it's around $100 million. Kidaro allows corporations to build secure, controlled workspaces for remote users. Its software enables companies to restrict what applications, network resources and data users can access. Virtualization is big business; Kidaro has a great product for corporations. Why doesn't Microsoft just do deals like this instead of spending $44.6 billion on Yahoo? That seems easier.

Yahoo Amr Awadallah loves his company like a Spartan loves ripply abs and bulbous pectoral muscles. So he and some friends slapped some subtitles over Zack Snyder's 300 to make a 10-minute short called Yahoo 300. We excerpt the best scene above. Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang is King Leonidas; Bill Gates is Xerxes. Sue Decker is Sarah Connor ... er, Queen Gorgo.

Troublemaking "gangsta" rapper Ice Cube made a video taking aim at white-collar wrongdoers like Enron and Halliburton, then promptly partnered with another white-collar, white-run wrongdoer, Microsoft, which has been punished for antitrust violations on two continents and has fomented a virtual army of haters. The business deal, which includes software for Ice Cube's new internet TV network, is quite a turn for a rapper who started out in the late 1980s with raps like "Fuck the Police" and "A Bitch is a Bitch" before moving on to albums in which he called white people "devils," Korean storekeepers "little chop suey ass[es]" and basically issued repeated calls for the overthrow of various levels of government. Of course, Ice Cube and Microsoft executives do share a certain disdain for U.S. law enforcement authorities. After the jump, the press release announcing Ice Cube's hard core partnership with "the Man" of the computing world and an excerpt from his new video, in which Ice Cube name-checks Allah and makes fun of corporate criminals like the one he just went into business with.

This morning, Michael Arrington said Google, Microsoft and two media companies were bidding $200 million or more on Digg. Digg CEO Jay Adelson declared on Friday:

Steve Ballmer's "Web developers! Web developers! Web developers!" monkey dance at Microsoft's Mix conference in Las Vegas wasn't the Microsoft CEO's first choo-choo ride on the crazy train. And frankly, in terms of entertainment value, it wasn't even close to his best. For those moments, see below. Turn up your volume for best effect.

"Are you a man" — hand chop left — "or a woman?" — hand chop right, asks a Nightline correspondent interviewing Megan Wallent, the Microsoft executive who came out as transgender last fall. "I'm me," Wallent replies. Good answer! But did the Nightline guy really need 15 seconds to spit out the question?

Outside of geekdom, Internet Explorer still dominates browser market share. That means for most people, the Web works the way Microsoft wants it to. And so far, for those using the newest version of Internet Explorer 8, Microsoft's version of the Web doesn't include Google Maps. Or at least not a very useful version of it. We're sure a fix is high on Microsoft's priority list. Check out the screenshot Blogoscoped's Phillip Lenssen nabbed, below.

At Mix08 in Las Vegas, a Q&A session brought out the monkey-beast in Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer. "I've been in PR mode the whole time, and you want to hear Web developers? Web developers! Web developers!" he shouts. You sure you want to postpone Yahoo's annual shareholder meeting, Jerry? The clip, below.

A Digg sale might happen soon, to Google or Microsoft, says Michael Arrington. Cofounders Jay Adelson and Kevin Rose have made no secret of their disinterest in running a big company or going for an IPO. That leaves no exit but a sale, which Digg's bankers at Allen & Co. have been working on for months. This latest rumor could be just another trial balloon. Or it could be the beginning of the end. If not to Digg, then to a drama-filled life as an independent concern perpetually for sale. (Photo by briancaldwell)

Megan Wallent, the Microsoft executive who first revealed her plans to become a woman on Valleywag, has told her story to ABC's Nightline. The segment airs tonight at 11:35 p.m. on KGO. Wallent rarely speaks about her relationship with her wife Anh. But in the TV profile, Wallent explains how he first confided his discomfort with his birth gender to her. "It felt like a betrayal," Anh told Nightline. "In 38 years he couldn't find someone who he felt comfortable enough to open up to and share this." Until Wallent met her, that is. The couple, who have a young child born before Wallent's transition, say they are staying together. When I first met them last December, shortly after Wallent's first surgery, the two spent most of lunch flirting with each other like newlyweds.

Forbes magazine reports that, worth $58 billion, Bill Gates is no longer the world's richest man. He's the third-richest. Although more than half of his wealth is invested outside Microsoft, Gates can likely blame the bad news on his oldest buddy. Steve Ballmer's unsolicited bid for Yahoo tanked Gates's net worth. Between the day before Ballmer announced the bid and February 11, when Forbes finished its accounting, Microsoft shares fell 15 percent. (Photo by Esparta)

European antitrust regulators will approve Google's $3.1 billion DoubleClick acquisition later this week, the Financial Times reports. Expect Google's top lawyer David Drummond to soon turn up the heat on Microsoft-Yahoo. Before the EU finally approved Google-DoubleClick, Drummond had reason to stay relatively quiet as the new company formed by Microsoft-Yahoo would obviously create real competition for Google. But with EU approval in hand, that incentive is finished. Last fall, Google CEO Eric Schmidt credited Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer with slowing down Google-DoubleClick in Washington and abroad. Think he isn't eager to set his own suits on the attack?

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer is reportedly considering changing the offer to buy Yahoo from half-cash and half-stock to all-cash, effectively raising the bid from $28.87 a share to the its original $31. That would up Yahoo's price tag from $41.5 billion back to $44.6 billion. Credit Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang for negotiating without really trying. Word has it his dalliances with Time Warner and News Corp. inspired the idea.

By extending a March 14 deadline for shareholders to nominate new board members, Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang thwarted Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer's carefully orchestrated plan to make public what's so far been a behind-the-scenes proxy fight. Ballmer intended to announce a new slate of candidates for the board on March 13. Now Yahoo doesn't have to accept nominations until 10 days before it schedules its annual shareholder meeting. Yahoo could hold that meeting as late as July 12. Sources say Ballmer is pissed. "Ballmer is just one of many highly emotional people involved in this," a source told the New York Post. "Microsoft has been trying to avoid going completely hostile, but now it is going to get completely hostile." What's Ballmer going to do? Throw chairs at the meeting?

Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang and Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes want an AOL-Yahoo merger that would give Time Warner a large minority stake in the new company. The idea is that joining Yahoo and AOL — which itself plans to add a dozen new sites in the next six months — would create the dominant online advertising company. OK, maybe. If you're not counting search.

CNET's supertelegenic Natali Del Conte got a Microsoft-sponsored visit from Entourage star Jeremy Piven to talk up Office Live Workspaces. But as Natali said in an email: "They don't use Workspaces. Microsoft just got them to say that they will. I don't understand why Microsoft would have such a non sequitur way to promote this product. The product is good. Why bother with this nonsense?"

Depending on which search-engine marketing firm you believe, Google either had a really good month monetizing is search traffic, or a really poor one. It's so confusing! Seeing HitWise's search market share numbers from the month, I bet competitors Yahoo, MSN and Ask.com are glad they didn't have to worry about having all that traffic.

For some reason, Jeremy Piven and other Entourage people were hanging out last night at a party for Microsoft's new Office Live Workspace product. A CNET reporter went "hoping to find some people willing to talk about whether Office Live Workspace really is a formidable answer to the Google Docs that I've found myself using pretty frequently," but instead found a bunch of models there. Way to screw up a good Microsoft gathering, Jeremy Piven. [CNET]

Announcing Microsoft Online Services yesterday, Microsoft chairman Bill Gates let fly on Google. "Their economic model is based on consumer search," Gates said.

Today at an event in Seattle, Bill Gates will announce Microsoft Online Services: email, calendars, contact lists, video conferencing for small and medium-sized businesses. To start, Microsoft will offer free access to the services, which are online versions of Microsoft products Exchange, Office, and SharePoint. Someday Microsoft hopes to charge, but for now, the plan is to halt Google's encroachment. Microsoft executive Chris Capossel told the WSJ he expects half of the company's Exchange customers to be using the new service in five years. batmoo)