20 Biggest Record Company Screw-Ups of All Time :: Blender.com. some great ones.

Steve Jobs speaks out - FORTUNE. page 10 on “overcoming roadblocks” is really interesting.

Macworld | Apple now No. 2 music retailer in the U.S.. dang.

BERKSHIRE HATHAWAY INC.. it’s worth pointing out that this is the website for the most successful company in modern history.

Could Bear Stearns Do Better? - New York Times. JPMorgan is buying it for $2/share. my head almost spun off when i read that. it was at $160 last year and $35 on friday.

Meanwhile, Microsoft Buys Danger. they make the sidekick cell phones. interesting.

The Associated Press: Yahoo Formally Rejects Microsoft Offer. nothing like a formal rejection. and what happens when you put two flatlined companies together?

monkey boy’s three-legged race

The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs is a great blog. It usually has some really funny stuff. On the weekend it posted the best commentary on the proposed Microsoft/Yahoo deal I’ve seen. The article is well worth reading but here’s some of the choice quotes:

It’s like taking the two guys who finished second and third in a 100-yard dash and tying their legs together and asking for a rematch, believing that now they’ll run faster.

But here’s the really dark part of all this. [Ballmer] knows it won’t work. He has to know this. He’s not stupid. [...] He has a mindset that was formed in Detroit, where he grew up. He’s a Big Three automaker kind of guy. And this is a Big Three move. It’s Ford buying Jaguar and Land Rover and Volvo because they can’t think of anything else to do.

Oh, and synergy. Yeah. They’ll talk a lot about synergy. You know, like when you hook together a bunch of data centers that run on completely different technology stacks.

Scariest to me is that in all the articles I’ve seen the one thing Ballmer keeps bringing up is how he’ll be able to save $1 billion a year in costs. Are you kidding me? Is this Microsoft or Dunder Mifflin? I mean, I don’t doubt he could save a billion a year. But it says a lot about the kind of company Microsoft has become that this is what they’re thinking about.

Microsoft challenges Google with audacious $44.6bn bid for rival Yahoo | guardian.co.uk. now that’s insane.

Amazon to buy Audible for $300 million | Reuters. 25% of audible’s business comes from apple itunes.

Goldman Sachs set to cut 1,500 jobs. say what? they made $11 billion last year.

British Brewer Is Sold for $15.4 Billion - New York Times. ok, there’s been so much consolidation in the beer market in the last few years that you can’t even keep the company names straight. My bet, in a couple of years they’ll all collapse into one company which will be called OmniBeer.

French Bank Says Rogue Trader Lost $7 Billion - New York Times. “This month Risk Magazine, a British publication, named SocGen “equity derivatives house of the year,” praising its ability to manage its risks.” This guy puts Nick Leeson to shame

Michael Lewis on Goldman Sachs cashing in on the subprime mess. “I can’t think of another example of a big Wall Street firm saying so clearly through its trading positions as Goldman Sachs did over the past year that it thinks the rest of its industry, including its own people, is a bunch of idiots.”

Yahoo To Cut 20% Of Its Workforce? that’s 2400 people.

Sun buys MySQL for $1 billion - Times Online. i really have no idea what sun’s business model is anymore.

Citigroup Posts $9.8 Billion Loss; Will Cut 4000 Jobs - New York Times. and “cutting its dividend by 41 percent and obtaining a $12.5 billion cash infusion” from investors like the Singapore government.

TheStar.com | Telus considers dumping its `Betamax’ of wireless networks. rumors of a switch from CDMA to GSM. mentions how it wants to get in on the “lucrative business” (read: racket) that is international roaming charges. via jody

Springwise: Auto insurance by the mile. i would love this as i rarely use my car.

NYTimes Op-ed asking if Amazon’s customer service is the reason for it’s stock rise. “According to Forrester Research, 52 percent of people who shop online say they do their product research on Amazon.”, that is nuts.