<div style="margin: 12px 0px; font-family: arial; color: #333333; background: #ffffff; border: solid 4px #e5e5e5; width: 100%; clear: left;"><div class="CM_CTB_Content_Wrap" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;background-color: #ffffff;"><div style="border-bottom: solid 1px #dcdcdc; white-space: nowrap; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: #eeeeee ;background-image: url(http://clipmarks.com/images/source-bg.gif); background-repeat: repeat-x; height: 24px; line-height: 24px; vertical-align: middle; padding-bottom: 4px; color: #666666; font-size: 10px;" ><a href="http://clipmarks.com/clip-to-blog/" title="see clips that are hot right now"><img src="http://content.clipmarks.com/blog_embed/b5ab991f-f185-4eda-81ad-4d330ddafd88/BF8CE035-8DD4-44DA-A5AE-02F99B59B998/" alt="" width="19" height="19" border="0" style="vertical-align: middle; margin: 0px 4px; display: inline; border: none; float:none;" /></a>clipped from <a title="http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/02/technology/02nocera.html?_r=1&oref=slogin" href="http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/02/technology/02nocera.html?_r=1&oref=slogin" style="font-size: 11px;">www.nytimes.com</a></div><blockquote style="text-align: left; padding: 0px 8px; margin: 4px 0px 8px 0px; background: transparent; border: none;" cite="http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/02/technology/02nocera.html?_r=1&oref=slogin"><H1> <NYT_HEADLINE _moz-userdefined="" type=" " version="1.0"> A Giant Bid That Shows How Tired the Giant Is </NYT_HEADLINE> </H1></blockquote><div style="height: 2px; font-size: 2px; background: #dcdcdc; border-bottom: solid 1px #f5f5f5; margin: 2px 4px;"></div><blockquote style="text-align: left; padding: 0px 8px; margin: 4px 0px 8px 0px; background: transparent; border: none;" cite="http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/02/technology/02nocera.html?_r=1&oref=slogin"><P>But let’s be honest here. Microsoft isn’t exactly buying a high-flier. Even after a Microsoft-Yahoo merger, Google would still have twice the search market of its competitor. Its ad placement service is superior to either Microsoft’s or Yahoo’s. And Yahoo has struggled enormously in the last few years. It, too, could have been early in social networking; its chat rooms could have lent themselves easily to something that might have rivaled <A title="More articles about Facebook." href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/business/companies/facebook_inc/index.html?inline=nyt-org">Facebook</A>. Just like Microsoft, it missed the opportunity. It is quite clearly a company that has lost its way, and the question of whether Microsoft can refocus into a viable Google competitor, well, let’s just say I’m dubious. </P></blockquote></div><div style="margin: 0px 6px 6px 4px;"><table style="font-size: 11px;border-spacing: 0px;padding: 0px;" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="100%"><tr><td style="background:transparent;border-width:0px;padding:0px;">&nbsp;</td><td align="right" style="background:transparent;border-width:0px;padding:0px;width:107px" width="107"><a href="http://clipmarks.com/share/BF8CE035-8DD4-44DA-A5AE-02F99B59B998/blog/" title="blog or email this clip"><img src="http://content8.clipmarks.com/images/c2b-foot.png" border="0" alt="blog it" width="107" height="17" style="border-width:0px;padding:0px;margin:0px;" /></a></td></tr></table></div></div>

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