Mathew Ingram notes another reason why I think MS should bail on the Yahoo offer: they'll be buying the husk of Yahoo, not Yahoo itself. In other words, what remains will be damaged goods even before the massive after-purchase culture war gets starts:

If I were a betting man, I would expect the number of smart Yahoo employees making that leap to increase exponentially over the next few weeks and months. Just think about it: would you want to not only be acquired by Microsoft -- the king of .Net and shrink-wrapped software -- but submerged in a sea of merger-related bureaucracy and time-sucking process for the next year or two? I wouldn’t. I hope Google has brought in extra staff to handle all the calls.

Whatever MS gets from this buy, they'll end up wishing they hadn't bothered.

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