My only question is whether my Microsoft stock will finally go up in value. It has been spinning like a beach ball in mid-air for the past several years. I haven't lost money yet, but I'm hoping that maybe it will finally start performing. Maybe Yahoo will be enough to goose it into Google-like performance.

"My only question is whether my Microsoft stock will finally go up in value."

At least, it's better than it was a year ago. I am not optomistic about taking over Yahoo. Besides Windows/Office, MSFT seems to kill markets by offering poorly thought-out features at cheaper pricing to buy share.

A la Zune vs. iPod, XBox vs. Wii/Playstation, OpenOffice.org vs. Office. I am hoping they stay out of the LINUX market.

MSFT just seems like a dividend play only to me.

spinning like a beach ball in mid-air

Sweet irony in your imagery, since that is the symbol for a Mac operating system that's slowed down or hung up. (If I had spent $2500 three years ago on 100 shares of AAPL instead of one of their Powerbooks, wouldn't I be sitting ?.)

Microsoft's bid for Yahoo is a disappointment to me; if the deal goes through, I'll be taking my home page and calendar services elsewhere.

sitting pretty, that is.

I think Yahoo and all of it's children (thinking mainly about Flickr) could stand to have an influx of cash help them get things done.

As for the poorly thought out features comment, I own or have owned a Zune, 2 different iPods, xbox 360 and wii. Both the Zune and xbox were easily the best in their respective groups. I should point out that I'm talking about the zune as a music player. The Zune PC software needs some work.

I'm hopeful that as Ray Ozzie's influence spreads at Microsoft, that their online offerings start to get better.

I second that. The Microsoft consumer products I've used (Zune, Xbox, Xbox 360) have been at or near the top of their class. Who has a better online play system than Xbox Live? I applaud Microsoft and Creative for giving people an alternative to overpriced devices such as the iPod and the Playstation 3.

The Microsoft consumer products I've used (Zune, Xbox, Xbox 360) have been at or near the top of their class.

the Zune is a Toshiba product repackaged. Microsoft didn't invent it, design it or spec it--it just ordered it and oversaw the release and marketing.

the Zune is widely panned by critics and testers. based on sales and the current Zune defective return rate (rumored to be about 24%), so do a lot of customers.

the Zune is priced about the same as an equivalent iPod.

Yahoo? a smallish market share and dropping. they've updated their free services repeatedly to compete w/Google, but Google continues to grow customers exponentially. i don't use either one.

Microsoft buys creativity and repackages it. that's their "talent."

I like xbox with xbmc... it is a great home media player.