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Steve, Steve, Steve (Ballmer, that is, not Jobs), what are you doing? Why are you acting like a love-starved teenager? Is it just me, or does anyone else think Microsoft's desperate leap from wooing one potential bedmate to another is embarrassingly reminiscent of a randy adolescent desperately trying to pull in the 30 minutes before the pub calls time?

So the Yahoo thing didn't work out. We're sorry to hear it, but you did yourself no favours in conducting those amorous advances so publicly. It doesn't exactly give me much faith in using your own search tools.

And now, if we can believe the usually reliable Wall Street Journal, you've turned your attention to Facebook. You really should have laid low for some time. Yahoo's shares took a tumble since you backtracked on your offer, and now the company is worth even less than you

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were willing to pay; why not snap it up?

Yet chasing Facebook so quickly after you were snubbed by Yang and the Yahoo board makes it look like you have no confidence in your own web portfolio - one of the most powerful brands on the net. Perhaps you've been mulling it since you bought a stake in the company last year, but to the outside world it looks more like a case of 'you'll do' after your first potential mate turned you down.

Now, I'm neither an analyst nor a relationship counsellor, but would it not be better to be happy as a singleton until the right girl comes along? Perhaps bide your time with Yahoo, woo her some more and try again in a few months' time when the markets could well be quite different and she may turn out to be a much cheaper date.

It reminds me of the time Bill Gates, who will forever be associated with the company, long after he's gone, pretty much admitted that Microsoft missed the significance of the Internet. Now you're telling us you missed the significance of search and social networking, too.

Still, at least you have some powerful, popular websites, and in the markets where you do play - search aside - you're doing pretty we'll. That's more than can be said for Apple whose only online service, its corporate site and online store aside, is a mediocre paid-for service. Now that really is an example of a company that missed the boat. But at least it did so with dignity.