Ballmer: Yahoo would give Microsoft a 'consumer face' online

BetaNews | at | by Mike

It would be a merger whose size and scope could only be rivaled by pharmaceutical companies earlier this decade. But Microsoft's objective now is to somehow convince everyone -- Yahoo's shareholders, its board, their combined customers, and let's not forget the trade regulators -- that the whole of the two companies will somehow be greater than the sum of all the other sums of their parts put together.

There are an inordinate number of questions arising from Microsoft's announced takeover bid of Yahoo, only a few of which financial analysts managed to successfully squeeze in this morning, during a conference call that was abruptly cut short at under a half-hour.