Yammer agrees to Microsoft's $1 billion acquisition offer
"Sledgehammer spending" really bugs me.  It says "we didn't exercise any brain cells to figure out what our purchase is <i>actually</i> worth, we're just throwing money at the wall because we think we can".<p>Investors should scream at stuff like this.  How many things could millions of extra dollars buy?  For one thing, maybe they could have acquired 4 or 5 additional companies, patents or other IP.  If there was <i>any</i> chance that they could have done this for $500 million or $400 million or $50 million, that <i>matters</i> and should have been investigated thoroughly.  Those saved millions of dollars can also be used to employ a bunch of people on projects for years (heck, sometimes entire applications are written by one or two people inside a company, and they might build something really cool that can be sold).<p>Microsoft has lots of money, sure.  But this kind of spending isn't thinking long-term.  Are they guaranteed to have this kind of money in a few years, even?  There may be a time when they're completely incapable of making a key future acquisition because they overspent on crap like this.