This NYT article starts with the sentence “Oh, how the mighty have fallen.”

A Giant Bid That Shows How Tired the Giant Is – New York Times via kwout
My own take is this is a desperate act, an admission that Google is dominating Microsoft in the state of the art area of online or so called “cloud” applications. MS, of course, still owns the desktop 😦 especially in larger organizations.
I don’t think this merger would work, even if it gets by the EU regulators who have seen MS as being anti-competitive in the past. The US regulators have been either asleep or for sale regarding MS’s behavior. These companies have very different cutures and technology bases.