The most perplexing issue about Microsoft's takeover bid for Yahoo is what will happen to all of Yahoo's architecture after the fact? This just does not sound like it will go down well because I can't think of two companies with such diametrically-opposing views on just about every single part of their architecture. I suspect that Microsoft will concede defeat on the issue of running Windows and will allow Yahoo to continue using FreeBSD and the wealth of open source development tools currently in use. They already let Facebook do the same. Yet if this scenario plays out, it'll be a very unsavoury proposition for Microsoft to have to live with from a marketing standpoint - a huge chunk of their own company using, even thriving under a completely non-Microsoft ecosystem. Microsoft could try to spin this by saying that Yahoo's current efforts have failed and it's time to transition over to Microsoft software. But this is highly unlikely given the extreme amount of infrastructure in place. This ain't no Hotmail. If there is a transition, it will be lengthy and unwieldy. It will mean time lost re-inventing the wheel rather than competing with Google which defeats the purpose of this whole acquisition in the first place. I know that this deal looks quite sane from a high level business sense, but I can't help but think this thing is a lot of short term jockeying by Ballmer to be seen as doing something at the expense of longer term success.