Microsoft: Let It Go

I just KNEW that Steve Ballmer couldn't just walk away from the Yahoo deal. As I mentioned in a previous entry - I was shocked at the time - and actually proud of Mr. Ballmer for being an adult and just walking away.

I should have known better.

Now it seems that Steve's big idea is to hook Time Warner and News Media into coming up with a partial bid - just for the search part of Yahoo. They basically just want to gut the company and divvy up the bits between themselves.

They know that Carl Ichan is STILL on the war path - and with the shareholder's meeting date less than a month away - I can't figure out if this is just a cruel joke on the part of Microsoft - of if they're actually serious.

The shares of Yahoo were up $3 on the speculation that somehow, maybe, the shareholders might make some money out of this. I bet Mr. Ichan was happy about that!

The deal STILL makes no sense. The PR value of it is gone. Everyone agrees: it was a crazy move to begin with - and Jerry Wang is still insisting (with hookah pipe in hand) - that Yahoo is a viable company that is going to take off (any day now).

Meanwhile - back at the Google Camp - Eric Schmidt must be laughing his ass off. He struck a deal to put Google's ads on Yahoo's site - so even as Yahoo's stock tanked after the original Microsoft deal fell through - Google is making mo' money.

It's still not all smiles and balloons for the Googlehoo alliance - they're getting the strip search treatment from the feds at the moment - but I don't think it's going to amount to anything.

But even if it did - Google will still have made money on the "temporary agreement" they had with Yahoo. I'm sure it's not much - a couple of million bucks - but enough to buy a nice latte for all their engineers who are actually working on stuff they can sell.

Steve (Ballmer) - it's time to let go. Here's a list of the 5 stages of grief - you're making good progress! Only two more stages to go:

1. Denial (check)
   
2. Anger (check)
   
3. Barganing (check)
   
4. Depression
5. Acceptance

The depression thing - I know you're probably saving it all up on the inside - after all, Bill's gone into the jungle, Vista sucks, you just pulled the license plug on the only thing people wanted to buy - XP, now this whole Yahoo thing.

Let it out. Buy some Chunky Monkey, grab an Xbox from the guys next door, steal your neighbor kid's copy of Guitar Hero and let it all out.

Then, come Monday morning, you'll finally be able to accept reality: this deal stinks as much as Vista does.