Maybe Jerry can grant stock options to all the employees that only vest when the company gets taken over. Like the equivalent of a years salary or some such. Then when Microsoft tries this again, and Yahoo says "YES", every employee is suddenly retired, and rides off into the sunset. It will leave Stevey boy the Balder with nothing more than an empty shell. Of course that is what he deserves, but I assume that is another story.

Me? If this happens, I'm off to using another search/portal company. Bye Bye!

"the board gave Ballmer free rein to do whatever he wants. But no decision was reached. He may walk away. He may launch a proxy battle. He may try something in-between."

You missed the preferred alternative of Stevie: throwing around some furniture, and threaten

"Fucking Jerry Yang is a fucking pussy. I'm going to fucking bury that guy, I have done it before, and I will do it again. I'm going to fucking kill Yahoo."

I still don't see why they are pursuing this, if they do manage to buy it a wave of hysteria from you haters will drive everyone into not using yahoo (the same as you are doing by vomiting endless crud about vista). I think the money would be a lot better spent building a few more datacenters and increasing funding to the robotic and alternative input divisions (especially considering the superior readability of the new vista speech recognition API's that have been released, those guys deserve a medal as I can now switch the channel by stating in true startrek fashion "Computer, BBC Three")

Your assumption that 'everyone' will be driven into not using Yahoo seems to be based on the assumption that anyone uses it now.

I'm off to vomit some crud. Fair and accurate crud, but apparently I'm vomiting it. Vista is great, because you can talk to your computer.

Yeaaah.

My assumption relates to only those who use yahoo, but please feel free to spout your "Fair and accurate crud" about a great OS, I'll just assume you've never tried integrating speech recognition into your own programs before but just to let you know it's now made exceptionally easier and more accurate on vista.

Now go back to squinting at your barely legal porn in your underwear you fat grotesque freak.

" Vista is great, because you can talk to your computer.

Yeaaah." .... By Geoff Mackenzie Posted Friday 2nd May 2008 08:27 GMT

Ironic, isn't it, Geoff, to have thought to have got so far and to not have IT Beta Programmed and Program Led 42 Listen and Act upon and with Third Party/Out of this World Consensus. A Very Short Sighted View with no Infinite Dynamic Vision.

Megs Anonymous in the Blinding See of Hubris ....as in Mega Hello Mania and Delusional Grandeur on and in Dis-Play?

Oh, I Think we can definitely do much Better than that, don't you?

"Now go back to squinting at your barely legal porn in your underwear you fat grotesque freak."

Wow, what a great spokesman for Microsoft you are!

Vista does speech recognition! Wow! An option available in Mac OS 8 as I recall. Do try to keep up M$ - you are the innovators!

I'm not a spokesperson for microsoft I just prefer software that saves me time, hence my alliances. My comment to Geoff was completly justified as one item of slander deserves another.

I tried the speech recognition in OSX.4 Leopard. It sucked.

Back to the story. I don't use Yahoo, but I've heard good things about its email service. I'm not sure Google's strategy is any better than MS's regarding web services, but whatever happens to Yahoo I still think Google will win. MS could turn it around tomorrow if they wanted to, though. Google has some 'good enough' stuff out there like GMail, Reader, Search, iGoogle, Blogger, Youtube, [insert your favourite here] with nifty single-sign-on. But Google's portfolio is still just as much of a scattergun as MS Live. MS needs to really, really focus on some of the core stuff and make it as good as Visual Studio. [ducks the VS haters]

are they still after them? The merger doesnt' make any sense to me. Yahoo is stagnant at best. It was once a mighty icon of internet goodness, but those days are long past. I don't see any value that Microsoft could possibly get from spending 42 BILLION on these guys. Better to leave them alone and have them continue to chip away at Google, thereby strengthening MS's position.

"I don't see any value that Microsoft could possibly get from spending 42 BILLION on these guys"

Nor do I, but I think they should find out the hard way. Time-Warner and AOL come to mind...

I tried the speech recognition in OSX.4 Leopard. It sucked.

OSX.4 is Tiger.

Leopard is 10.5

And really? Good things about yahoo mail??? I had an email address there (an uncommon username, i might add) and within 2 days I was getting spam, after not using the address ANYWHERE! Yeah, that's some sweet email there...