Michael Arrington has provided independent confirmation of Laurent Féral-Pierssens’ earlier speculation about Microsoft acquiring Xobni. Looks like your comments may have been right on the money, Laurent (pardon the pun!).

Arrington claims that two independent sources have noted that the deal has legs (presumably one of these being Féral-Pierssens?), although he also notes that “yet another source says the LOI hasn’t been signed by Xobni yet”.

Regarding acquisition price, no-one seems to have any idea yet; Arrington notes that:

I have not yet been able to track down the price, but a previous offer of sub-$20 million was supposedly rejected by Xobni.

It’ll be interesting to see whether this is all just a storm in a tea-cup, or whether MS is really going to bring the Xobni technology in-house. If so, let’s just hope the innovation shown by Xobni so far isn’t swamped by the inertia of such a large company.