Actually, I have been one of Yang’s most persistent critics for over a year, so I am not his last stand.

But excellent point on being played since the start of this whole Internet thing and I love the Star Trek reference!

Today, you acknowledge quite professionally that you (Boomtown) and “the rest of us” were played. So, thank you for the acknowledgement. Not so humbly, I would suggest that, in more ways than either of us can count, we’ve been getting played by all these players since not long after we received our promotional versions of the original Mosaic browser.

Today, I would only take issue with your assessment that “Icahn has been bought and paid for”. The more appropriate interpretation would be that Icahn strongly believes he can more easily oust Yang from within than from without. After his last ridiculous fit of ranting and recanting, Yang has no credibility left even with the likes of Boomtown, and he knows it, so ya gotta figure that all he’s playing for at this point is time to find a way to sabotage the inevitable MS takeover without inviting umpty-seven lawsuits.

In a way, Yang’s bringing Icahn aboard reminds this old nerd of an original-series Trek episode entitled “The Changeling” — in which the Enterprise (Yahoo!) encounters a rogue space probe maniacally compelled to destroy everything in its path (Icahn), and Kirk (Yang) decides that, for the protection of his people and his ship, the safest place to have the probe is aboard the ship, where “at least it won’t be taking potshots at us.” In the end, however, Kirk utilized the tenets of logic to dispose of the rogue — tenets of which Mr. Yang seems to have lost sight in the fog of his personal war.