Quotes From Around Yon Blogosphere

Well, the real question now is: When will Microsoft begin withdrawing its troops from Iraq?

"Shock and Awe" was Wired’s headline responding to the news that the software giant has offered $44.6 billion to buy out Yahoo in what would be Microsoft's biggest acquisition yet. (Anyone remember Starbucks' sinister Phase 2 of operations?)

In a clear bid to outstrip Google of its market dominance in the search engine sector, Bill Gates is willing to pay $31 a share, which is almost twice what Yahoo's stock is worth (or was worth before the merger announcement). Unsurprisingly, the Justice Department’s Anti-Trust team are already scanning the proposal’s fine print.

The two companies flirted like this less than twelve months ago, but a deal then was squelched due to Yahoo's confidence that it could pull itself out of the financial doldrums. It didn't, as Microsoft chief executive Steven Ballmer reminded Yahoo's board in one of those friendly Microsoft courtship missives that translates to, "There can be only one."

Yahoo had announced that it would be laying off 1,000 employees this year — a bloodletting that Microsoft says needn’t occur if the company were absorbed.

Bloggers are too overwhelmed, generally, to be able to decide whether this takeover would be good or bad.

-- MICHAEL WEISS

The essential problem is that what Microsoft and Yahoo lack, and what Google's got in spades, can't be gained through merger. Google's secret to success is not so secret at all. It has created the ultimate expression of Silicon Valley capitalism -- a company of engineers, a firm that elevates technical innovation as its core mission.

Google's eating everyone's lunch simply because it makes things faster, better and more useful than anyone else -- and Microhoo will have no better way than Yahoo and Microsoft did to replicate that engineering feat.

-- FARAD MANJOO

Google's dominance has forced Microsoft to concede that it did not get its Internet business right.

-- STEVE LOHR

Consider: Apple can get away with a snafu like the iPhone pricing issue, because it has earned the trust, even the adoration, of its users. Could you imagine having that trust with Microsoft?

Dell used to have that trust, but frittered it away, as they moved from one of the best to much worse customer service in the PC space. AOL also -- they've decayed, become a garbage service for the clueless. (AIM remains mostly worthwhile).

Google has earned my confidence, and -- so far -- has not given me any reason to reconsider that trust.

Yahoo still has some residual trust -- but its waning fast. I still use Yahoo as a home page, but their inattentiveness to some of their properties is shameful. They have a very, very brief period to right the ship, or their long horrific slide into irrelevancy will be irreversible. Yahoo has frittered away so many good properties, I find it embarrassing. (WhoTF is advising them?)

-- BARRY RITHOLTZ

The hundreds of newspapers counting on Yahoo to turbo-charge their online sales could suffer sputters instead, as their prime technology partner addresses a hostile takeover bid by Microsoft and a simultaneous internal reorganization to cut costs.

-- ALAN MUTTER

The Chinese government’s censorship of Web sites with no discernible political content has fostered a backlash.

-- HOWARD W. FRENCH

It begins to sound a bit naughty -- all this talk about the need to "stimulate" the economy, as if we were discussing how to make a porn film. I don't mean to trivialize our economic difficulties or the need for effective government intervention, but we have to face a disconcerting fact: For years now, that strange stimulus-crazed beast, the economy, has been going its own way, increasingly disconnected from the toils and troubles of ordinary Americans.

-- BARBARA EHRENREICH

After three quarters that only an aficionado of defense could love, the fourth quarter of Super Bowl XLLII was incredibly exciting. Plus, the right team won. You cheat on your opponents. You cheat on the women in your life. And eventually it catches up with you.

-- PROFESSOR BAINBRIDGE