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May 5, 2008
Ballmer to Yang: You're a fucking idiot. 
Microsoft walked away from the Yahoo acquisition attempt cleanly, citing Jerry Yang's ineptitude as the prime example (though Steve Ballmer was quite more diplomatic than myself).
I didn't want to see the deal go through myself -- I think Yahoo is worth more in the long run, and a MS acquisition would have destroyed it through a clash of cultures ( will the employees like it and stay? will they have to migrate from an entire Open Source platform to .NET -- YHOO uses php and mysql extensively ).
In his open letter, Ballmer says what I - and many 'real' analysts keep saying - Yahoo is *fucking stupid* for working with Google on the search advertising front.
The quest for extra search ads cash is going to undermine their display and behavioral advertising systems - by putting a vote of no-confidence in their ad platforms ( panama, smart ads, etc), creating a new customer relationship touch-point with Google, and allowing Google to set pricing standards on too much of the online ads industry.
An MS acquisition would have been the death of Yahoo's promise, potential and spirit -- but the way Jerry Yang has avoided it has pretty much killed a lot of Yahoo's potential on its own.
Posted by Jonathan at May 5, 2008 11:49 AM
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