Alas. It looks like maybe, finally, Microsoft has thrown in the Yahoo towel. The last straw in the months long we-love-you, we-love-you-not dealings may have been this week's announcement that proxy-battler Carl Icahn had apparently jumped ship and made amends with Yahoo head Jerry Yang, accepting three board seats in the process. This following a Icahn, Microsoft offer that Yahoo termed "stupid." Yesterday, chief financial officer Chris Liddell told a group of Microsoft investors that the chance of deal was "so small as to be essentially negligible," and Microsoft head followed up saying that he hoped Liddell's comments "had removed any 'specter' of uncertainty."

So what's the next step for Microsoft? Well they have just announced a deal to bring "its Web search and search ads to social-networking site Facebook Inc." After all this, we imagine they will need as many friends as they can get.