From TechCrunch:

“Microsoft has offered 19.00 Norwegian Kroner ($3.56) per share. The offer represents a 42 percent premium to the closing share price for Fast as at January 4 and values FAST at 6.6 billion NOK ($1.2 billion U.S).”

This could heat things up in the space.  Microsoft is already giving away a “free” (if you own Windows) Enterprise search product, and there is the MOSS search capability within SharePoint.  Acquiring FAST could make things interesting for Endeca, Google, and the rest of them.

But what are they really buying? We’ve seen FAST come up in competitive bids in our Google Search Appliance work, but the customers are typically migrating away from it.