Microsoft and Yahoo!: Not Happening!

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Happy Monday. While we were all out golfing, going to our kids' soccer games and shopping at Costco; negotiations in the deal of the year ended in no deal.

After three months of back and forth, Microsoft finally got tired of being told "no" by Yahoo! and released this press release on Saturday. It includes a copy of Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer's letter to Yahoo! CEO Jerry Yang.

What does this mean to you and me?

- Our free Yahoo! accounts will remain free and free of requiring a Windows Live login and password.
- Google just dodged a bullet.
- Google may get shot out of the saddle anyway in the long run now that Yahoo! is free to be what it is: Yahoo!
- It's getting increasingly easier and more desirable to walk away from the Windows world. Microsoft needed Yahoo! bad; mostly to shake its dinosaur image in the Web 2.0 world. Now, it's really going to look like a dinosaur.

Caveat: Remember, it took the dinosaurs 65 million years to actually become extinct.

Renee Oricchio is a technology writer and former supervising news producer for CNN Financial News. She has been covering the computer industry since 1987. @oricchio