No Interest In Yahoo? Why, Microsoft?

Microsoft washed its hands of pursuing Yahoo, and the executive responsible for chasing and failing to catch Yahoo has a new job. There is a sense that Microsoft could be back.

Clausewitz viewed war as a continuation of policy. The Prussian general and veteran of the Napoleonic conflicts understood the fundamental lesson of conflict: things change rapidly.

Microsoft's pursuit of Yahoo as a quick fix to its anemic share of the search query and advertising market apparently ended in May, and Microsoft has pointed out periodically afterward just over Yahoo they are. Even the guy who ran the failed takeover, Kevin Johnson, has departed Microsoft in favor of Juniper Networks.

So there's no interest, people from Steve Ballmer on down in Microsoft would have us believe. We're just not all that convinced.

Clausewitz already cleared up the mystery a couple of centuries back. There's no restart to talks that have been going on for years before Microsoft's more aggressive bid at the end of January 2008. The continuation of policy never stopped, who is to say it isn't progressing today?

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