So just a few days after gobbling up del.icio.us, Yahoo has formed a partnership with Six Apart, whose Moveable Type was one of the early leaders in the blog software game — more flexible and sophisticated than Blogger.com. According to the release, Yahoo will be offering Moveable Type to small businesses for running blogs, but Jeremy says anyone can use it.

A nice deal for Six Apart’s Ben and Mena Trott (and Anil Dash), who have expanded MT into hosted solutions such as Typepad and now also own LiveJournal. I moved my blog to Typepad from Blogger a year or so ago and found it easy to set up and use, although I have since moved on to using a version of WordPress that I host myself on a server at home. I like the openness and flexibility of WordPress, and I’ve been trying out the hosted version too, at WordPress.com. Coincidentally enough, Dave says that Yahoo will be offering WordPress too soon.

Anyway, another smart move for Yahoo I think. Maybe it’s difficult to see how the del.icio.us purchase makes sense financially, but I think it and this deal are signs that Yahoo gets it — or is getting it. And more than one person has pointed out that many of the moves it’s making are ones that you would figure Google either could be or should be making.