Not to mention the $5 million wasn't much of a premium. I think PSFT has been hit with a couple downward revisions to earnings based on the ORCL bid. Prospective customers aren't sure what to make of things ... and will likely delay purchases until things are resolved. I think the PSFT board unanmously rejected Larry's bid yesterday.
I don't think buying or merging application software companies ever works unless you are a consolidator like CA, who buys the company, gets rid of all the fixed overhead and milks the support, consulting and add-on/upgrade money. Merging application companies doesn't work. If you want the expertise, just hire the programmers away. If you need salespeople or marketing people - just hire them. You don't need to buy a whole company. It only seems to work in the minds of m&a people and executives. There is no value add by cobbling two enterprise application software companies together unless you are going to harvest the other company - ala CA's strategy. IMHO.