I thought I’d coined “MicroHooBook” but Matt   had done that  a full hour before.

Just a moment, just a moment…. looks like The 463 had it before Matt.   Originality sure isn’t what it used to be…

Microsoft is certainly working with Yahoo now to try to buy a piece of the company rather than the whole – Microsoft announced that over the weekend.     Most think they want to buy the search component of Yahoo and that Yahoo may sell because if they don’t Carl Icahn will be forcing a proxy fight that he will probably win, having already bought or lined up about 30% of the votes/shares in his favor.     

But John Furrier “broke” the rumor that as soon as they had Yahoo search MS would snap up Facebook for 15-20 billion.    I think this rumor is speculation and nothing more and I’m even thinking this was something of a test of the non-emergency blogcasting system, which generally delivers misleading information even faster than the truth. 

John Furrier and Robert Scoble are both clever guys, which is why I’m a bit suspicious they have cooked up the MicroHooBook rumor to test TechMeme and how the blogosphere reacts to unfounded rumors.

As usual, the blogOsphere loves unfounded and unverified rumors and this is the key tech blog story for Monday May 19. 

I think Sarah Lacy has this right, and she’s got more of an inside track to Facebook than most reporters.