re:tone, yes, I'm taking a sensationalist stance because I feel the author takes one too. I'm aware this is detrimental to discussion, but hey, it's more fun this way! :)

re:interpretation of death, sure, let's call it irrelevance. OR let's even call it 'random variable x". The point is that pg asserts the company has been in "x" for 12 years. Which is 60% of the WWW's lifetime. It may be a decline, but I would not call it a spiral. at least of death.

re:research, I agree about orthogonality of research and company. This was addressing pg's point about Yahoo being a "talent-magnet" -- they indeed are a talent magnet in this domain.