No, you can't have my money.
Steve Ballmer is a dick. Figures he'd say he won't take no for an answer - I'm sure that makes Yahoo's board of directors all warm and fuzzy with positive feedback for this acquisition. What an arrogant cocksucker.
We talked this over in my morning meeting and figure that they are really after the talent that Yahoo has. Sure, many of Yahoo's engineers may quit after faced with the inevitability that they are going to become a Microsoft employee...but most won't (quite a few of those that do will probably look into working for Google - so ironically Google may benefit a bit from this based largely on the contrast of their reputation vs MS). They may get a few things code-wise that they can find a use for, but I don't think that's the motivation here. Sure, they'll move up the chain in the search world (the current standing is Google, Yahoo, and then Microsoft) and gain Yahoo customers (DSL, dialup, software contracts, etc) but I don't think that is worth 44 billion dollars to them - it's the talent behind the scenes they want that will help them dominate Google and other large software companies.
Personally, I don't give a shit because I already can't stand Yahoo.