Over time, as I bounced between publishers, Yahoo grew like crazy. It withstood Excite, Lycos, Alta Vista, Inktomi, and a whole host of other wanna-be search engine companies.

Then came this Google company. I knew something was up because of the fierce loyalty by the Slashdot crowd. They were promoting and encouraging it among their usership specifically because Google was built on open source software and it supported the community from the beginning, so the Slashdotters felt like they were supporting one of their own.

This did wonders to build Google's user base. While the others flamed out (Alta Vista's parent company CMGI went down in flames, Lycos got bought by a Spanish telco and was squandered, Excite merged with @Home and promptly sank), Google kept growing and growing.

Then you guys lost your way. It didn't really sink in until I heard a conference call with former CEO Terry Semel, where all he talked about was how Yahoo was a major e-mail company.

E-mail? You're a search engine company. He was gone shortly after that, a wise move.

Yahoo has become quite a force since our conversation at the San Jose Convention Center back in early '95. It employs one friend of mine (he's in LA, came to Yahoo via the Overture acquisition) and there's no missing those towers down in Sunnyvale, looming over the plaza with Micro Center.

But let me be clear: merging with Microsoft would have been the dumbest thing both companies could ever have done. Your resistance was the right move. I don't know if we share the same reasoning but the outcome made sense, Carl Icahn be damned.

First, two stragglers tied together do not make for a first place. A Yahoo-Microsoft merger would take years to integrate and years to bear fruit, and all Google will do is further its lead while the two of you lost what you had.

This is another case of Microsoft's siege mentality and obsession with being in every potential market, and having to be a leader in that market. Does Microsoft need to be in search, wasting billions to gain marketshare? Look at how much money has been squandered on the XBox. At least $2 billion. That's money that might be better suited in something like, I dunno, making Vista usable?

Second, Google is 10 miles away, Microsoft 1,000. What was going to stop Google from bleeding off every talented yahoo who didn't have a non-compete contract (which is to say, virtually all of your coders)? There would be a conga line of talent going up the 101 freeway while Ballmer tore what was left of his hair out trying to stop the inevitable. So you would have been left with next to nothing.

Third, and most important, Yahoo is a major Web 2.0 company while Microsoft can't bring itself to say the phrase. Yahoo Mail is the best Webmail client out there. Gmail is amateurish and primitive by comparison, and Hotmail only slightly better, while Yahoo Mail looks like a real e-mail client with an interface similar to software we would install on our machines. Microsoft still carries a not-invented-here mentality and would probably waste years ripping out all your Web 2.0 code to replace it with Silverlight, another setback.

No, you need to link arms with another major Web 2.0 company. Yahoo and Facebook would make a ton more sense than Yahoo and Microsoft.

The only people who think the Microsoft deal was a good idea were looking at it from a shareholder perspective and not a technology perspective. The bald-faced greed of some comments just gets under my skin because they are masking their own desire to cash in under the guise of shareholder altruism.

They either don't know or don't care that the shareholder value comes from the technology in the first place, and merging Yahoo and Microsoft would have been the ultimate square peg in a round hole and would likely have destroyed or severely crippled both companies for years to come. The only winners of a Microsoft-Yahoo merger would be Google and Apple. No, the merger was a bad idea all around.

So you've got at least one non-shareholder on your side, for what that's worth. So, now what are you going to do?