The Microsoft bid for Yahoo that Yahoo top brass never wanted has been rescinded. On Saturday, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer withdrew his company's $47.5 billion offer—an amount which jacked up Yahoo's share price to about $33. Witness the drama:

Microsoft: "I'm going to buy your company for this much. Which I think is a lot."
Yahoo: "That's not enough, even if it was for sale."
Microsoft: "Well, it doesn't seem to me like you want to make a deal."
Yahoo: "Exactly, thank you!"

Yahoo head Jerry Yang said in a statement: "With the distraction of Microsoft's unsolicited proposal now behind us, we will be able to focus all our energies on executing..." blah blah blah. If Yang can beat back the faction of stockholders that was eager to sell to Microsoft, and if he can prevent the share-price dip analysts are predicting in the wake of the dead deal, and if he can manage to cement some sort of big money search-advertising deal with industry-leading Google without causing too much concern among regulators wary of monopolies, then warding off Microsoft just might be seen as gutsy—smart even.

As for Microsoft, whose bid for Yahoo was an attempt to counterbalance the office-application anchor tied to its leg and get in on that Internet game, it can still hope that antsy investors feel gypped and call for talks to resume. Short of that, it's in need of a whole new game plan. Which may involve AOL.

The winner, of course, is Google. The winner, always, is Google. In everything. Forever.