Yahoo should have taken the deal. As a product they are irrelevant - they are not doing anything someone else isn't doing better. They are headed to Netscape-like obscurity.

Meanwhile, I have to hand it to Microsoft. They have more cash in the bank than most small countries, their monopoly on office software is so complete they can release a shitty new operating system and basically not care that it fails, and they have executives working for them who know how not to pay stupid amounts of money for a soon-to-be-obsolete brand. They'll just hire all the Yahoo employees who get dumped out on the street when the company finally folds.

$5 BILLION for Broadcast.com? Wow. That's got to be some kind of corporate record for most money pissed away at once

DobbsFox:

"Worst" is of course subjective, but yes, some have called the Broadcast.com acquisition the worst of all time:

<link>

And the problem is that when even a very good company like Yahoo gets suckered into yardsticks like that, it gives them a tremendously inflated sense of their worth.

James,

I will say "worst." That deal, after all, launched Mark Cuban into the pop culture consciousness.

That's inexcusable!

-Me

As a product they are irrelevant - they are not doing anything someone else isn't doing better. They are headed to Netscape-like obscurity.

Amen. How could Yahoo not know this? I would value their business at a tenth of what Microsoft offered. Yahoo's corporate culture of unearned pride and imaginary achievements has been noted before on sites like Slashdot.

Microsoft should count themselves lucky that the deal fell through, could have been another AOL/Time Warner fiasco. Some think that Ballmer may have been foolishly pushing for the deal to save his job after the Vista debacle. <link>

$5 BILLION for Broadcast.com? Wow. That's got to be some kind of corporate record for most money pissed away at once

Hmm...no. Off the top of my head, I would refer you to the AOL Time Warner merger, which ultimately resulted in the company taking a $99 billion dollar write-down. Or Daimler-Benz paying $38 billion for Chrysler, which they later essentially gave away just for the sake of being rid of it.

hmmmmm...... that Time Warner reminder about AOL is a wake-up call of potential bad history repeating given the talk in the media of 'talks' continuing with TW over the last few weeks even while MS was as yet in pursuit.

I completely agree, Yahoo should have taken the deal. It would boost their stocks and profits. Yahoo is becoming dead in the water and need to give in. Hopefully the stockholders can push yahoo enough that it'll break and be bought out.