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

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avenue_A/Razorfish

[2] http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/09/microsoft-s...