Who would ever have guessed you could feel sorry for Microsoft, that you could root for it as the underdog and only backstop to Google's complete takeover of all digits everywhere? -- there seems little cause for happiness here.

Google's eating everyone's lunch simply because it makes things faster, better and more useful than anyone else -- and Microhoo will have no better way than Yahoo and Microsoft did to replicate that engineering feat.

Even the most ardent Microsoft fan wouldn't accuse the firm of doing well by creating great things. Microsoft's biggest successes -- Windows, Office -- have been the product not of revolutionary code but of brilliant marketing and, more important, savvy business tactics.