As you may have read, Microsoft Corp. recently placed a $44.6 billion takeover bid for Yahoo, Inc, which was declined by Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang. Along with the rest of the cyberspace geeks and investors, I’ve been watching this situation closely over the past weeks.

This morning, to my suprise, Microsoft took things to the next level with a rather slick move. The New York Times reported that Microsoft plans to inact a proxy battle with Yahoo this week in an attempt to lure the Yahoo’s shareholders into Microsoft’s camp. This means that if Yahoo doesn’t enter talks with Microsoft, the company will seek to nominate a new batch of directors to Yahoo’s board – and toss out the old board in the process.

According to the New York Times article, this tactic is expected to cost Microsoft about $20-$30 million, which is a less costly alternative to raising their bid.

Exciting times. I’m going to grab some popcorn.