Yahoo Endgame?

Microsoft is in the game to win. [Steve Ballmer July 2005, via Robert Scoble] 

And so is Yahoo, apparently. "My personal belief is if you're not in the game to win, you shouldn't be in the game, and that's the way that I try to encourage the whole company to think about it." [Jerry Yang, via BBC Newsblog, 6 November 2008] 

Yes but which game? 

"To this day the best thing for Microsoft to do is buy Yahoo," said Mr Yang. "I don't think that is a bad idea at all, at the right price whatever that price is. We're willing to sell the company," he told a packed ballroom at the Web 2.0 summit in San Francisco. [BBC News, 6 November 2008] 

Around the end of May 2008, BusinessWeek ran a story headlined Yahoo's Endgame. This theme had already been around for some months - indeed, Larry Dignan had called the endgame back in February 2008 (ZDnet). See also Umair Haque. 

Interpreting Beckett's play The Endgame, Wikipedia compares the struggle of Hamm to accept the end with "the refusal of novice players to admit defeat, whereas experts normally resign after a serious blunder or setback". 

(He takes out the handkerchief.)

Since that's the way we're playing it...

(he unfolds handkerchief)

...let's play it that way...

(he unfolds)

...and speak no more about it...

(he finishes unfolding)

...speak no more.

(He holds handkerchief spread out before him.)

Old stancher!

(Pause.)

You... remain.

(Pause. He covers his face with handkerchief, lowers his arms to armrests, remains motionless.)

(Brief tableau.)

[Samuel Beckett, The Endgame]

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See also Google-Yahoo: Unintended Consequences (BusinessWeek, 6 November 2008)