Mathew Ingram digs into the MS/Yahoo fight, and finds that Yahoo's management really did push against the deal - hard:

Some details of the back-and-forth between Microsoft and Yahoo have come to light as a result of the unsealing of documents in a shareholder lawsuit against the battered Internet giant, as Eric Savitz details at Tech Trader Daily. One of my favourite moments is where it emerges that Microsoft offered Yahoo a whopping $40 a share back in January of last year, but then CEO Terry Semel turned the deal down. Nice call, Terry — that’s right up there with taking a pass on buying Google in 2002. Of course, Terry still has most of his $71-million in options or whatever, so he’s probably doing OK. Other shareholders, not so much.

Yes, it was a bad for Yahoo shareholders to not take the deal, but it was a big win for MS shareholders that it didn't go through. Why? The two companies have radically different cultures, and very different technical architectures. Any attempted combination would have yielded months (maybe years) of vicious infighting at the middle management (and below) levels. The result would have been a company smaller than either one is now, IMHO. So sure - Yahoo should have taken the deal on financial grounds - but MS shareholders should all be breathing sighs of relief.