Whistling past the graveyard, Yahoo went ahead Tuesday with its thin, pre-Microsoft plans of canning a thousand non-core people worldwide in an attempt to get the firm growing in the right direction. The number actually turned out to be more like 1,100 but far from what it would take to puncture its 14,300-man bloat.

Blog Claims Saleforce.com For Sale
The Silicon Valley Watcher blog claims to have it on good authority that that shrine to software-as-a-service Salesforce.com has approached Oracle looking to get bought for $75 a share, something like $9 billion, roughly a 50% premium. And if such a deal were done, it foresees Salesforce CEO and erstwhile Larry Ellison lieutenant Marc Benioff as Ellison's natural successor. It figures Benioff is bored and notes that he's been reducing his financial position in Salesforce by selling shares every day since July of 2006. It argues that Salesforce, which Ellison seeded, would strengthen Oracle's hand against SAP and that Oracle will have to buy the joint at some point anyway because NetSuite, Larry's other chip on the SaaS table, can't scale to Salesforces' size fast enough.