Check it out. Highlights:
So the big story these days is that Google and Microsoft are going to war and that either could win. This is a big story because it’s a great story: two undefeated heavyweights preparing to bash each other’s brains out. Alas, it’s also fiction.
….In the absence of disastrous mistakes by Google and Yahoo!, Microsoft’s best chance to win with MSN is to merge it with AOL and spin it off. This would be extraordinarily challenging, and it would not guarantee success: the merged company would still run third behind Google and Yahoo!. A combined MSN-AOL, however, would be far stronger than either company alone.
Blodget has a longer report (from which this post is summarized) available for free on the site, which marks his entry into the b’sphere…wlecome!