Does Bill Gates Know About This?

Microsoft is going into hock to buy Yahoo.

Time was, Bill Gates insisted on having an entire year’s worth of expenses, in cash, on hand at all times. That way, even the firm failed to make a single sale all year, they could stay afloat.

Now with Steve Ballmer at the helm, Microsoft is going to take on massive debt, on a dubious assumption: that two companies that have failed to compete with Google in the past, can succeed tomorrow by strapping themselves into the same lifeboat and bailing loads of cash out into the ocean.

I once defined “synergy” as the word executives use when they can’t come up with a sane reason to buy some other company. I think that definition applies here, too.



<><>: “Imagine a circus act in which two enormous, clumsy, awkward elephants that don’t really like each other are supposed to mate while riding on skateboards…”