no surrender wrote:

RECOMMENDED FOR CONSERVATIVES REQUIRED FOR WEE, TWEE, AND FEY LO-COMS.

EXCERPTS FROM COMMENTARY IN WSJ

LEAD: Yahoo, be coy, but take the Microsoft deal.

Microsoft's interest in buying Yahoo had been rumored for so long that

the bid -- $44.6 billion -- was finally made last week, it managed to
surprise just about everyone in the high-tech world. With merger rumors
fading and Yahoo slumping, it was generally assumed that cofounder and

Jerry Yang and his team were hunkering down to cut their losses with

and then embark on a major re-organization.

Microsoft's offer has changed everything. Within minutes after the news
broke, the mainstream media and the blogosphere were on fire with
speculation on what it all meant. Here in Silicon Valley, and other
high-tech enclaves around the world, the debate was a welcome respite

the increasingly depressing news that always accompanies the industry's
quadrennial slide into recession.

The announcement also brought to the surface a lot of old emotions,
including Silicon Valley versus Seattle, corporate capitalism versus
entrepreneurship -- but most of all, the fear of Microsoft as an

force crushing all competitors before it. Pundits instantly started

if the feds would even allow such a merger. Meanwhile, at Yahoo's
photo-sharing subsidiary Flickr, members are throwing a collective (and
characteristically clever) tantrum about being handed over to their new
overlords.

The low point came on Sunday when David Drummond, Google's senior vice
president and chief legal officer, darkly summoned the ghost of

past. "Could Microsoft," he asked ominously on the company's Web site,

attempt to exert the same sort of inappropriate and illegal influence

the Internet that it did with the PC?" He was dangling the bait in front

the Federal Trade Commission to see if it would nibble -- all while
conveniently ignoring the fact that if there is any monopoly at work in

digital world these days, it is Google's absolute dominance of Internet
searches. Its market share surely equals IBM in computers, Intel in
microprocessors and, yes, Microsoft in PC operating systems at their

Years ago on a Sunday morning news show, Bill Gates made perhaps his

prescient comment ever. If you look at the history of technology

he said, none have ever been able to stay at the top for long. This is
Microsoft's moment, he continued, but it won't last forever. He was

If you look at Microsoft with an objective eye, it becomes apparent that

is a giant company past its prime. It is big and rich, but increasingly
toothless.

And that brings us to the Microsoft-Yahoo deal. For all of the

this is just big, rich, but slow-moving giant looking to buy another
slow-moving giant, the latter having stuck to an obsolete business plan

long and lost its way. The scheme is less predation than it is

In the world of search, Google owns these two lumbering monsters.

Microsoft understandably covets the sheer size of Yahoo's subscriber

believing it can accomplish what Yahoo has failed to do: convert more of
those 130 million monthly visitors into real, paying customers. But
Microsoft has hardly shown it can do that at MSN. So, can it really find

solution to Yahoo's structural problems?

That remains to be seen -- and Microsoft's one genius is as a late

The real problem Yahoo -- and perhaps soon Microsoft -- faces is that

legions of Yahoo users don't want to be stuck inside a small corner of

Web, not getting all of the experiences and services (like live TV and
first-run movies) they were promised. Especially not when they can run
around and find all of those things, in abundance, elsewhere on the Web.
Microsoft is even less prepared to solve that problem than Yahoo.

That leaves search, which is probably the real reason Microsoft wants

Combining the two search engines would, in terms of sheer numbers,

the biggest challenge to Google to date. But the sum of two also-rans is
almost never a winner -- unless the newly merged is very, very lucky in

competitors. That's what happened with HP and Compaq: Who'd have guessed
that Dell would suddenly fall on its face?

Incredibly, the same may happen with a Microsoft-Yahoo deal if it

If you look at the stock market, peruse the industry gossip blogs,

the departure of key employees, or read about the various new

(energy?) the company is pursuing, it becomes increasingly apparent that
Google is a company about to have an early midlife crisis.

may turn out to be a pedestrian idea with absolutely brilliant timing.

If that is the case, and the merger proves successful, it will have more

do with Google than Microsoft and Yahoo. Which is why the feds should

out of it.

So, Yahoo: Take the deal (unless a better one comes along). Microsoft:

this be the first of many high-risk moves. Treat Yahoo as a heart
transplant, not a skin graft. And Google: This new competition should be

warning to stop fooling around and get back to business.
****
Anyone see the phrase "successful monopoly" up there? Nope, not
there...ain't no such animal.

More idiocy from our own ne'er was, Dennis.

--Jeff

--
It is only those who have neither
fired a shot nor heard the shrieks
and groans of the wounded who cry
aloud for blood, more vengeance, more
desolation. War is hell.
--William Tecumseh Sherman