Microsoft Plan D, just buy the friggin users

Monkey Boy and the brain surgeons up in Redmond have now moved on to internet strategy Plan D. A quick recap of the history of Microsoft internet game plans--

Plan A = pretend the internet doesn't exist (failed).
Plan B = build our own search engine / web portal (failed).
Plan C = buy a successful search engine / web portal, Yahoo (failed).

That brings us to Plan D. As luck would have it, we have our hot little hands on an uber-secrete transcript of the meeting held deep in the bowels of Microsoft world headquarters where Plan D was hashed out.

Balmer, "OK, Yang told us to take our $47.5 billion and shove it where the sun doesn't shine. Get a load of the nerve of this guy!"

Corporate Lackey #1, "Are you sure he got the right number of zeros? Maybe Yang thought the offer was $47.5 million? Let's go back and talk to the guy to see where he's coming from."

Balmer, "No damnit! No! I told Yang to go Cheney himself. F' Ying Yang. He's friggin jumping in bed with Google. F' Yahoo."

Corporate Lackey #2, "Um boss, if you burned the bridge to Yahoo ... what the F' are we supposed to do now?"

Balmer, "You're asking me? You mean I pay you two jokers oodles in cash and stock options and god knows what other benefit goodies but all you can do is stand on the corner with your dicks swinging in the wind saying, 'What do we do now Steve?' That's just dandy! We got $47 billion to invest so you two assholes better come up with something."

Corporate Lackey #1, "Hey, this might sound crazy but I had a wild brain fart. Why don't we just buy the users? Politicians buy votes. Let's buy the users."

Corporate Lackey #2 starts to crawl under table to avoid the fallout from the volcano eruption sure to come from Monkey Boy in response to this suggestion. But, to his amazement, Balmer calmly considers the idea.

Balmer, "Hum, you might just be on to something there Jonesie. Get some accountants in here to calculate how many users we can purchase with $47 billion. How will it work? Like how do we decide who gets the money?"

Corporate Lackey #1, "We could run it like the Discover card, cash back on purchases through our web site."

Balmer, "Brilliant! Jonesie draft up a proposal for my new internet strategy and ship it up to the board for approval. Then get somebody on a press release pronto."

See beta of Microsoft's new products search site with cash back feature and Yahoo news story on the Microsoft cash back strategy. Hey, here's an idea--why not just build a better search engine? One users willingly engage with rather than are bribed to use. Oh, never mind.
(Satire)