Google has bailed on its bailout of Yahoo. After 7.5 years of near total stasis, the Department of Justice's anti-trust division emerged from a persistent vegetative state to . Why this particular battle roused U.S. anti-trusters from their dirt nap is a mystery. But it was enough to scare off the Googlers.

(An alternate theory holds that this is : to throw a cluster-FUD bomb into the Microsoft-Yahoo merger, giving them time to put even more mileage between themselves and the also-rans. Not evil per se, but very very sneaky.)

So what options does Yahoo have now? To go six months ago.

Quoth :

"To this day, I have to say that the best thing for Microsoft to do is to buy Yahoo. I don't think that is a bad idea at all -- at the right price, whatever the price is, we are willing to sell the company. We were ready to negotiate, we wanted to negotiate a deal, and we felt that we weren't that far apart. But at the end of the day, they withdrew and they since have been very clear about not wanting to buy the company."