I was amazed yesterday to see so much time devoted on the Internet to Microsoft walking away from the Yahoo deal. Considering the amount of analysis given to the whole thing over the last few weeks, you would have thought that people would have been out of words. Guess not ;-)

My take - it happens. How many times have you offered someone some amount for something, the other party wanted more and you said "no way"? Whether it be trading cards in the schoolyard, a car or business buyouts, it happens - every day. Personally, I questioned the value of the deal for Microsoft other than to acquire a competitor in the search and e-mail markets in an attempt to increase market share. Would it be worth it? I am not sure, but I am not immersed in the deal so I won't play "armchair acquisitions analyst" (at least not today). In the end, Microsoft decided it simply was not worth the extra effort to go the hostile takeover route.

So now that it's all over (except for the over-analysis), what next? I think it's safe to say that life goes on at Microsoft. As for Yahoo - life does go on there as well. Now there is a bit of work to be done (obviously), but Yahoo does appear to have several "Plan B" options already lined up.

With all this said, can we now go back to a daily life that does not include hundreds of Microsoft/Yahoo posts? My RSS aggregator would thank you if it could :-)