> Now, it’s of course possible that Yahoo would have done well under Microsoft. It’s also possible that unicorns are real. There’s essentially nothing to suggest that Microsoft/Yahoo would have worked. Meanwhile, there’s plenty to suggest that the opposite would have happened — namely, what happened with aQuantive post-acquistion. And the fortunes of Yahoo since the rejection.
That deal included some of the most foolish business decisions made in a long time and interestingly enough both sides made the entirely wrong decision. Microsoft was stupid for bidding, Yahoo was stupid for rejecting.
Remember that msft sold Avenue A/Razorfish [1] to Publicis for $530mm, plus IIRC something on the order of a billion dollars of guaranteed purchases of msft display inventory ([2] mentions but doesn't know the amount), though I could be way off on that. So msft probably got $1B back from the $6B purchase, so I don't understand how they can write down more than $5B. Anyway, it means the aQuantive purchase was 16% less shitty than everyone reports =P
