I think Ray Ozzie may have gotten to be as dumb as Jonathan Schwartz. Schwartz seems to think that spending $1B on MySQL is a great plan (someone should offer him a bridge, and see if he goes for it). Now we have Ray Ozzie of MS explaining why they need Yahoo:

Microsoft is doing all it can "to use the resources we have to ensure there is a vibrant advertising ecosystem," Ozzie said. "If you wonder why we're so interested in Yahoo and its creative people and properties, I hope this makes it a little bit clearer."

This ignores a few simple realities. First off, many of those creative people won't stay when MS takes over. Second, there will be months (possibly years) of internal knife fights for dominance at the middle management lavel. Finally, Yahoo is built on open source, non-MS technologies. MS is very much an "eat your own dogfood" kind of shop. The amount of time and money that will end up being spent to redo all that stuff onto Windows will more than eat up any benefit.

Here's a better idea: layoff something like three fourths of the people you have working on that problem now, and make sure that you whack nearly all the managers. Now, take the rest of them, give them their own building, separate them from day to day control by corporate, and I bet they'll do something amazing.

It would be tons cheaper, and generate a lot fewer power struggles - not to mention a complete lack of regulatory oversight issues. But hey - it doesn't look nearly as visionary, so it won't happen.

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