Woo-hoo! No more MicroHoo, YaSoft etc.

Protracted acquisition battles are always annoying, but the lengthy stalking of Yahoo by Microsoft, to me, had its own special layer of yick: those endless attempts at trying to smash the words Yahoo and Microsoft together. Way too cute for lil' miss Adverganza. On a more serious note, even if there were certain business reasons for Microsoft to own Yahoo, it seemed like a cultural misfit from the beginning, whereas the search advertising deal that Yahoo struck with Google yesterday—which killed any thoughts Microsoft might have had about still getting hitched to Yahoo—sounds right, no matter what the antitrust regulators, or Carl Icahn, or Steve Ballmer, might eventually have to say in the matter. Even after all of the numbers are crunched, it's hard to discount the importance of entities that are working so closely together having a similar world view. Google and Yahoo are different companies, no question, but both come from that quirky Silicon Valley mindset. Last time I was at Yahoo (admittedly, it's been awhile), the campus was filled with purple and yellow flowers. You could picture Google doing something similar, but that would happen at Microsoft over Ballmer's dead body. Let's hear it for YaGoogle! Doh! (Photo via Opencontent on Flickr.)

Yes, people do actually leave Google

Don't know who in the ad industry attended the Web 2.0 Summit last week, but probably would've made many in advertising happy to know that occasionally people actually leave Google rather than flocking to it like moths to a flame. In fact, the conference, which was held in San Francisco, actually devoted a whole panel to why Googlers might become ex-Googlers. The panelists included former Google ad strategist Patrick Keane, who is now evp/cmo at CBS Interactive. Said Keane, ""The financial incentives are important ... but I think there are bigger things—not that Google isn't a big thing."BTW, I scanned the list of speakers at the event (go to this link and scroll down), and while it was really impressive—anyone ever hear of Rupert Murdoch, or Steve Ballmer, or John Doerr?—it was utterly lacking in people from the advertising industry. Only ones I found were Brian McAndrews and Curt Viebranz, who run online advertising businesses from the publisher side. To me, something's wrong with this picture.

If Bill Gates cares about you, you've made it

One sign of how dependent technology companies have become on advertising revenue can be summed up like this: Bill Gates was the opening speaker at Microsoft's annual Strategic Account Summit this year, a meeting of agency types and clients, which is taking place out in Redmond this week. (A transcript of his remarks can be had here.) Back in 2003, I was the only reporter invited (long story), and at the tail end, just before everyone headed to the airport, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer gave a few closing remarks. While that's all well and good, the person everyone still wants to see is Gates—even if he is spending a healthy amount of his time giving away his money. At the event four years ago, after a series of breakout sessions, word got around that one of the groups, in search of its meeting room in an adjoining building, actually bumped into B-b-b-bill, and those people became the envy of the conference, with the possible exception of another group, which found a way to sneak into a room where Gates actually was speaking. Well, advertisers, your moment has arrived. As for what Gates said, he predicted that newspapers would all be online in five years. Good thing he's not at this conference.