Fortune - Struggle? You don't normally think of that word applying to the company Bill Gates founded. But there it is: Microsoft, one of the most aggressively competitive, brainiac-attracting, technologically superior, and oh, yes, cash-gushingly profitable companies of all time, can't for the life of it make a dime on the Internet.
It's not as if earning money on the web is such a remarkable feat. Everyone knows that Google (GOOG, Fortune 500) remains the company of online advertising, generating operating profits of $1.7 billion last quarter on revenues of $5.5 billion. Yet even industry doormats Yahoo (YHOO, Fortune 500) and AOL are profitable.
Yahoo, so badly managed that co-founder Jerry Yang recently demoted himself from CEO to "Chief Yahoo," eked out operating earnings of $70 million in its most recent quarter. Yang's return to Chief Yahoo status (he'll keep his board seat) renews speculation that Microsoft will try again to buy Yahoo, or at the very least, ink a search deal with it.
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