Michael Arrington at TechCrunch is reporting that Yahoo! is holding a special board of directors meeting "to determine, effectively, the fate of the company". No one has stepped up to save Yahoo! from Microsoft, according to Arrington, with SoftBank bowing out earlier today.  According to Arrington:

There are only two options left. Accept the offer in principal, and try to increase the price with no negotiating leverage at all, or do a deal with Google to outsource search advertising and, likely, search itself.

The board, we’ve heard, is basically being told by outside advisors to take the Microsoft deal. But we’ve also heard that a contingent of senior executives at Yahoo, who are willing to do literally anything to thwart a Microsoft takeover, are pushing for the Google deal and will present their case at the meeting.

We'll have more coverage of the deal as it progresses, including more comparisons of Yahoo! services, an expanded list of the factual information on the deal, and of course more of our opinions, and yours.  Stay tuned!