Micro-hoo dead in the water

From Paul Thurrott on the Supersite for Windows Blog 04.05.08:

Well, it looks like Microsoft's attempt at a hostile takeover of Yahoo! is over. And really, thank God for  that one: Yahoo! is the tech equivalent of a bad loan, something that would have come back to bite Microsoft sooner rather than later. So while it's unclear what the future holds--I'm looking for other Microsoft investments and purchases in the Facebook/MySpace area--I thought it might be interesting to look back at my coverage of this event in chronological order. In compiling these excerpts, I'm struck by how much press this generated over the past few months. And I'm so happy to put this behind us.

Given how long, protracted and eventually bitter this merger-come-takeover bid became, I'm of the same opinion as Paul on this.  It would never have worked as Microsoft had intended and the best thing they could do was to drop it like the hot brick that it is.  I've also heard on the grapevine that Yahoo are losing talent faster than the Titanic took on water as key engineers look to jump ship before it's too late.  And to be worthwhile, Microsoft were going to need to inherit every braincell Yahoo had to offer for the crazy price they would have stumped up.  By standing firm on price demands, Yahoo, it seems, shot themselves in the proverbial.  Now they've scuppered whatever chance they had of a viable future and alienated their shareholders to boot. 

Sure, you still hear the odd, 'it might still happen' type news story doing the rounds on the net, but it truly does look as though Microsoft and Yahoo are going go their separate ways.  For Microsoft, who knows what that might mean and down what avenues they'll venture in the cloud computing era before us.  For Yahoo, though, the picture is clearer: it looks as though the only way is down.  And out, probably.