Interesting Read: How Yahoo! blew it
Might go down as one of the chapters in the Technology History Books of the future:
http://www.wired.com/news/wiredmag/1,72497-0.html
Terry Semel was pissed. The Yahoo CEO had offered to buy Google for roughly $3 billion, but the young Internet search firm wasn't interested. Once upon a time, Google's founders had come to Yahoo for an infusion of cash; now they were turning up their noses at what Semel believed was a perfectly reasonable offer. Worse, Semel's lieutenants were telling him that, in fact, Google was probably worth at least $5 billion.
This was way back in the summer of 2002, two years before Google went public. An age before Google's stock soared above $500 a share, giving the company a market value of $147 billion -- right behind Chevron and just ahead of Intel.
As Semel and his top staff sat around the table in a corporate conference room named after a Ben & Jerry's ice cream flavor (Phish Food), $5 billion sounded unacceptably high ... 
Many people today still looks at the mistakes and what could-have-beens. I am still willing to bet that there are many more correct decisions that went unnoticed. It is just human-nature <consolatory_tone /> to glorify mistakes and forget achievements. Still, with a scale of a potential boo-boo as such, it is really not easy to forget.
I believe that both are still in the game. There are just too many WHAT-IF statements. Just like most things in today's world - and please pardon my non-deterministic stance and cliche here - There is really never a winner or a loser. It is all relative. It is a matter of leads, trails and of course, catch-ups. It still remains to be seen whether that decision (or non-decision) would come back to haunt them one day. Who knows - It may be the best decision they have made.
