Details have been trickling in all weekend about Microsoft's decision Saturday to make good on their threats to take their toys and go home — although we'll likely never get all the pieces of the puzzle, enough have emerged to put together a roundup of how things went down.

Of course, it all began three months ago, when a quiet Friday morning was shattered by the announcement that Evil Incorporated was gunning for Google and planned to use Yahoo to as it's H-bomb. Of course, the intervening months saw plenty of bickering back and forth, and more than enough maneuvering on all sides. Then came Microsoft's big 'get serious' moment, with the three-week ultimatum they eventually ignored. That was followed by the sudden and surprising appearance of quitter-talk, which is exactly what they ended up doing.

Now, as the dust begins to settle, we hear that the two weren't even playing in the same ballpark, a revelation that some of Yahoo's investors aren't too happy about. We've also seen the results the retreat has had on each company's stock price: Yahoo was down almost 15% at press time — but still up from where it was before the bid, and having rebounded $2 from pre-opening trading — while Microsoft was up just under a barely-noticeable 2%, still down from it's pre-bid price in February.

We're beginning to hear the Plan B's and the troop rallying; Jerry Yang's pre-existential perk up for Yahoos, promising a brighter, better future ahead, and Ballmer's ballyhoo, committing to take over the internet even without Yahoo. The latter ended with an interesting bit. Quoth the Ballmer: "Now is the time to do what we have always done best--be tenacious, focus on the long term, innovate, and keep working hard." We're pretty sure that's code for "spread fear, uncertainty, and doubt, violate national, supranational, and international law, trample on our competition, and just generally do whatever we want with complete disregard for the propriety, morality, or legality of our actions."

Well, at least they'll be doing it alone.
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Justin Ryan is News Editor for LinuxJournal.com.
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