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More details are likely forthcoming shortly, as Microsoft plans to announce a big search initiative later today. But in the meantime, restless bloggers have already stumbled upon some particulars.

Microsoft’s “Live Search cashback” will pay you back 2 percent to 30 percent of the price of products you find (via Live Search) and purchase from online participating retailers. Notable merchants already signed up include Sears, Barnes & Noble, Office Depot, Home Depot, J&R Electronics, and others.

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We took a lot of flack over a post back in January that questioned the security of Apple’s Mac OS X. TechConsumers left various comments ranging from “For some reason unknown to me, no one can ever show me a situation where a user opens a e-mail and their Mac turns into a robot sending out hundreds of e-mails” to “Mac OS X *is* inherently safer. You have to be a major league Windows zombie not to know and accept that.”

Well, CanSecWest’s PWN 2 OWN contest has just shown that Mac OS X isn’t “inherently safer” and that clearly it is possible for a user to open an e-mail on a Mac and have it join a spam botnet.

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Since Blu-ray became the next generation movie disc format of choice, the consumer supposedly has been better off. But Tom’s Hardware claims that prices of Blu-ray players are higher than ever and that now, in fact, is the worst time to buy.

Interesting. I’ve been tracking Blu-ray vs. HD DVD player pricing for the past year via Amazon and hadn’t noticed any recent increases. As of today, the Blu-ray players on Amazon are priced in the same range they’ve always been: the mid to high $300’s. Right now the cheapest Blu-ray player on Amazon is this Samsung for $357. I’ve seen it $20 cheaper, but I’ve also seen it more expensive.

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Last week plenty of rumors were floating around about a potential Microsoft / Netflix partnership. The announcement was supposedly going to happen during the keynote address (by Xbox Live exec John Schappert) at the Game Developer’s Conference in San Francisco last Wednesday. The concept: make it so Netflix’s 7,000 available “Watch Instantly” movies would be viewed easily on your TV via the Xbox 360.

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TechConsumer News is a feature we started out of a hobby of tracking the latest happenings within the consumer related technology sphere. The goal is to provide a concise, compiled overview of the most intriguing stories from the last few days. Feel free to give us feedback or send us tips. If you like what you find, you can subscribe via email or RSS.

Here’s the latest in TechConsumer news:

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The Wall Street Journal (subscription required) just broke the story that Yahoo’s board plans to reject Microsoft $44.6 billion offer, citing our favorite source: “a person familiar with the situation.” Apparently, $31 per share “massively undervalues” Yahoo, according to the same source. The logic is that the offer doesn’t take into account risks Yahoo would go through (that is, if regulators overturned the deal) by entering into an agreement with Microsoft.

Accordingly, Yahoo’s board will send a letter to Microsoft on Monday explaining the situation. This article comes just hours after another WSJ article quotes several investment bankers who basically say that “investors have lost confidence in Yahoo management’s ability to reverse the company’s fortunes on its own.” Nevertheless, here’s Yahoo’s reasoning for rejecting the offer:

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Given the rumor that today is the day for Yahoo to speak on the pending Microsoft take over, I thought I’d revisit the question I originally asked a year ago. Of the big three, what services do you use from each?

But first, I feel compelled to point out that at this same time last year, Google was being cited as Yahoo’s major obstacle. Now, of course, a partnership with Google is Yahoo’s theoretical last chance at avoiding Microsoft as its new owner.

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I have a sister who, over the weekend, pointed out a major shortcoming of search engines. It’s so obvious that I’m not sure why I didn’t think of it first. And keep in mind that this is my sister, which arguably boosts the creditability of this anecdotal story. That is, this isn’t some nerd’s dream come true; rather, she’s fairly representative of “regular” people trying to utilize the Internet practically. So here it is:

Why can’t you organize your results by date? And why don’t the search results themselves include the date each entry was published/updated?

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