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Generally speaking, stories about Yahoo don't have many exclamation marks - we've learned to drop 'em from the company's name.  Exclamation marks are appearing all over the place, however, following the exciting news of Microsoft's acquisition offer.

Barry Schwartz tossed out a brief "wow!" at around 7:45 this morning.  The kicker, though, is that he did so while on a trip to Israel - while a lot of other things speak to the importance of the development (including the $44.6 billion price tag, of course), so does that.  Duncan Riley, meanwhile, began his article on the subject with an all-caps version of the same three-letter word.

Meanwhile, when we move beyond the initial shock, there are some other interesting issues to consider.  Larry Dignan asks, "Can Microsoft manage it all?  Some key questions to ponder: Would Zimbra become the future Office Live?  How about rationalizing products, ad systems and search algorithms.  What about ad markets?  Cloud computing projects?  The overlap is immense."

Of course, if we're to return to the matter of exclamation marks, there's also the simple question of what the combined corporations would be called.  Thomas Ricker created a poll in which "Microsoft" is the current leader (the reasoning being that the dominant company has no need to acknowledge Yahoo).  The runner-up choice is a prediction that the Feds won't approve an acquisition.  But in third place is the relatively believable option of "Microsoft!"

Finally, if you haven't noticed by now, what's missing from among all these comments is an official statement from Yahoo.  (The "we got an offer and will think about it" bit doesn't really count.)  But should the company say something interesting, you can depend on reading about it here.