"The B is undoubtedly for Ballmer, but perhaps someone could fill in the other blanks?"

Google_for_me --

B - allmer
I - s a
N - atural
G - enious

would match, but make no sense.

Marriages of convenience are about the balance within division. Like a truce or pre-stressed concrete, one is the kinetic and the other, the potential. It's like giving the newly arranged-married couple, a chance to get aquainted but when the dowry fails to satisfy, you'll get a fried-bride. Oh what a tangled web we weave ….. Daddy, sell the bride, hokay, and don’t look back should she turned whore or becomes the quiet, simmering, suffering, house-keeper because the potential [husband] is a known entity - he will have his way. Get your girl to turn on her charms for that's how the cookie crumbles within the Relative Universe - up one day and the blue pill the next - for the mistress because this cutie will do things the wife won't. The duty of power is to manipulate its potential in a manner, befitting its idiocy & stupidity - all in the hope that he'll realised his true potential - under the banner of procreation.

Ronch:

If you have been using Yahoo search in the past, you WERE using reliable Linux servers...which are now being replaced with Windows Server 200X running the cleverly-named "BING" (so do not expect things to run as reliably or efficiently as before). What does "BING" stand for, anyway? The B is undoubtedly for Ballmer, but perhaps someone could fill in the other blanks?

The other "method" to MS's madness: they get to infect perfectly good Yahoo server farms with Windows, thereby increasing their market share/bragging rights. Pretty slick move on their part, however I feel sorry for the real IT dudes at Yahoo, who will now be replaced with MSE mouse-monkeys (and also for the shareholders and those who unfortunately continue to use Yahoo).

I've been using Yahoo! for the longest time as my search engine of choice, and I've lately been trying Bing as well. What I'm really wondering about is how Bing would bring something really drastically better than what Yahoo has now. MSN wasn't even as popular as Yahoo, and I seriously doubt, despite its prowess in software, that MS would revolutionize Yahoo! search capability.

To be honest, Bing is OK, but I guess I'm accustomed to the way Yahoo! brings in search results. I don't find Bing particularly compelling. Kinda like trying OpenOffice or Linux: Just for curiosity's sake.

In the valley of the searchless, the one-eyed Yahoo is Bing.
Everyone hold onto your chairs.
We shadow box and double cross, Yet need the Chase.
A license to love, insurance to hold.
Melts all your memories and change into gold.
Feeling Lucky? How about a bonus decision injun?

seems to me it's not a terrible deal for yahoo. Yahoo lost the battle to google and has been slowly eroding ever since. Same thing happened to microsoft in the search department. Bing is a decent search engine, I've been using it for weeks now and only had 2 queries where I had to load up google. And bing's image and video searches are so superior to google's they are almost not comparable. Plus bing has the daily picture :-). Not sure if Ying or binghoo bahoo or whatever will keep the same ui.

Bye bye Yahoo. You shan't be missed.
You should've made a deal with the Devil, I hear he sticks more to his contracts than Microsoft does. And he only takes your souls...

Looking at these deals just bring out the fickle out of people eh? Shareholders, at the first deal way way ago, was discontented at the chief's yahoo refusal on the first deal, now look! Baw hahahaha!

Oh by the way, the Cern Atom Smasher has pushed the start to November, if they ever find the God particle, full Alchemy and replication is not far behind, so alls of yous that haves money, silver, gold guess what! You know replication? The ultimate photocopier for objects? Yes, like in Star Trek!

Spend it or lose it, lose it, not by robbery but by devaluation. Now a funny question is, what will you do if ever you have a turn at this machine? Will you order Gold? Or a hot meal? Hmmmm, I can't wait to see what happens.

"Yahoo was happy to remain independent", you mean the executives of yahoo. Did anyone BOTHER to ask the REAL owners, the stockholders?

I'm surprised yahoo stock price only fell by 12%, as noted above, microsoft will just steal what it wants and discard the rest. It's in microsoft's best interest NOT to buy yahoo.

The shareholders are smart.
They know that working with M$ will kill your company or project.
They steal or kill you after learned anough about you.
Just ask the companies M$ worked with before.....many lost big time because of them!
Never trust a bunch of crooks.

Microsoft really does not get it, the shares fell because Yahoo is now instead of using its own very good search engine its not using Bing and everyone know its crap.