Buying Skype doesn't usually end well. Just ask eBay.

Remember Nick Hanauer, the jizzillionaire who couldn't force TED to make his audition speech an official TED Talk? Hired a PR army to sell us the notion that it was because Hanauer was just too down on the rich for the snooty TEDsters? He was aQuantive's largest single shareholder, and made just shy of $300 million when Microsoft bought it. Poor fella.

@2 Nick was also a major early Amazon investor I believe. The man is a fountain of awesomely right place and right time.

@3, true that. His rage over not getting his speech accepted I took as an augury that pride might be starting to get the best of him. His transition from moneymaker to cultural icon may not be as smooth as he'd imagined.

Its hard to get your foot in the door when Google's foot takes up the entire area and Yahoo happily eating the leftover scraps. Apple will probably have similar loses in attempts to generate money via online ads, but it wont be as severe, having only paid 300 million for Quattro Wireless.

Think of all the jobs they created here

And the Big Bald Bozo rattles on. Windows Phone disaster may yet put this bad acquisition in the shade. In lieu of a decent dividend, could the BBB please help the long-suffering shareholders by sending them a nice bottle of lube? (Bing Branded!)