The online search engine and advertising category has been slowly simmering beneath the surface, and it finally came to a boil with Microsoft initializing a hostile takeover of Yahoo! last week. Upon hearing all the rumbling in their backyard, Google looked out their back window, saw the two search engines fighting, and decided: "Awww heck, might as well try to break this up."

Here's a timeline of events leading up to this week (and it just keeps getting juicier and juicier).