‘Nuff said.

Here’s a few comments that struck my eye:

On one hand, I’m of course happy I can stay with Flickr. On the other, it would have been a great deal of fun seeing Microsoft get bogged down and distracted for a good few years as it struggled to digest Yahoo (and, likely, killing any value of that company in the process).

Think of what happens now: The shareholders of Yahoo are going to go ballistic. Yahoo management just left $47.5 billion on the table! (The total at $33 / share for Yahoo.) This has to be the dumbest corporate move since Time Warner buying AOL. My guess is that the Yahoo board is going to have to fend off a shareholder insurrection the likes of which we have not seen for a while, which will serve as a huge distraction for Yahoo. I don’t think Google can get too close to Yahoo, because the DOJ (let alone the EU) will not like the concentration of search advertising in the hands of one company.

Yahoo’s market cap takes a hit, shareholders initiate lawsuits against the Yahoo board. Microsoft may be able to swoop in next quarter and accomplish this via hostile takeover for significantly less. Surprised Microsoft didn’t do this sooner.