A friend of mine likes to say “You never know when you had a good day” by which he means that only time will tell the true impact of a particular event - something that looks favorable on the day it occurs may not turn out to be so and vice versa. This came to mind when I saw this morning that MSFT had called off the YHOO offer. I could see YHOO shares falling dramatically and not recovering and to add insult to injury having MSFT pick it up at a much lower price (or News Corp or someone else). But the near death experience may be just what was needed to get YHOO going. They have a lot of terrific properties and if they start to execute again I could equally see an outcome where YHOO strives as an independent, or – as Fred had suggested – spins out a series of more focused entities. It will be fascinating to see how this one plays itself out. As an aside, in the short term this is great news for any startup that was hoping to be picked up by either MSFT or YHOO. In the long run, who knows whether this was a good day for startups.

A friend of mine likes to say “You never know when you had a good day” by which he means that only time will tell the true impact of a particular event - something that looks favorable on the day it occurs may not turn out to be so and vice versa. This came to mind when I saw this morning that MSFT had called off the YHOO offer. I could see YHOO shares falling dramatically and not recovering and to add insult to injury having MSFT pick it up at a much lower price (or News Corp or someone else). But the near death experience may be just what was needed to get YHOO going. They have a lot of terrific properties and if they start to execute again I could equally see an outcome where YHOO strives as an independent, or – as Fred had suggested – spins out a series of more focused entities. It will be fascinating to see how this one plays itself out. As an aside, in the short term this is great news for any startup that was hoping to be picked up by either MSFT or YHOO. In the long run, who knows whether this was a good day for startups.