Well, it’s back on. I have a longer post on this debacle tomorrow but all I can do for now is quote myself smugly:

Commentators are speculating whether Ballmer is playing a game and wondering if he will be back to the table, the answer is yes – after Yang & Co have twisted in the wind for a while.

I’ve said it many times before but Microsoft must be crazy. Even if they got Yahoo for free it would be a waste of money. TC says:

Another source at Microsoft reiterates to us that they’re a buyer at the right price, but isn’t saying what that price is.

I predict that price is – ding – $31 per share.

The more I read about this dude the more I like him. Eschewing the usual corporate bromides he writes:

Until now I naively believed that self-destructive doomsday machines were fictional devices found only in James Bond movies. I never believed that anyone would actually create and activate one in real life. I guess I never knew about Yang and the Yahoo Board.

What a card! I also reverse my view that MS is wasting its money, we have had at least $45bn of entertainment. Cheers Jerry!

Pic: Boston Globe

Buying Yahoo will be the worst mistake in the history of the Microsoft Corporation. The Ichan boot recently connected with the Yang backside clearing the way for the catastrophe. Microsoft is a big, slow moving, well organised company founded by a brilliant strategist. Yahoo is a big, slow moving, badly organised company founded by an terrible strategist.

Microsoft are behaving like a kid who has seen a new toy. They have a perfectly good business making operating systems and enterprise software. Instead of focusing on this area of expertise they are tossing out half baked rubbish like Sharepoint to chase after a company they will never be able to integrate and will end up selling for half of what they bought it for, if they are lucky. Yes there is a lot of money in online advertising, Google may eventually be given serious competition from somewhere but certainly not from Microhoo, if it ever happens.

Buying Yahoo is the obvious but wrong move. They should be picking up companies like PBwiki, Connectbeam and Trampoline Systems to build the next generation of enterprise apps which will ultimately replace Office. Instead they are going to blow their entire pile on Yahoo for the privilege of managing its decline more efficiently.