Jerry and Sue: A MicroHoo! fairy tale

(Credit: Artwork by Arthur Rackham 1909, executive's heads courtesy of their respective companies, collage by Tobak)

Every kid knows the fairy tale of Hansel and Gretel, but I bet you've never heard the story of Jerry and Sue, right? Well, read on.

Not so long ago, in merry old Silicon Valley, lived a family named Yahoo. When hard times and famine hit, the father - an old advertising executive named Bostock - led two of his children - Jerry and Sue - into the forest.

Why did Bostock do that to his kids? Some say he did it so he'd have fewer mouths to feed, but nobody knows his motives for sure.

Lost in the forest, Jerry and Sue finally came upon a huge house made of gingerbread. The house was called Microsoft, and inside lived a witch named Ballmer. Some say the witch was evil, but he was more likely just desperate to reinvigorate his ancient, slumbering home with some youth.

In any case, Ballmer found the siblings eating parts of his house, so he brought them inside with the intent to eat them. First he tried to fatten them up, not just with food, but also with lucrative amounts of stock and cash.

The tale gets a little murky after that, but Jerry and Sue somehow managed to vanquish Ballmer and return home to their family, where everybody lived happily ever after.

Well, that's not exactly the end of the story. Here's what happened next:

An evil and selfish witch named Icahn came to Ballmer with a plan. The witches enlisted the help of a couple of fund managers with powerful spells. Then they found the children's home and gobbled up the entire Yahoo family.

Fat and happy, Icahn returned to his own land, leaving Ballmer behind to clean up the mess.

There are two morals of the story.

First, whatever your motives, you don't send inexperienced children out into the forest where they may get eaten by cunning witches, evil or not. Any father who does that to his family is simply dysfunctional.

Second, it might seem like a bad idea to throw in with a couple of witches, but in times of famine, you sometimes have to choose the lesser of two evils if you want to eat. That's exactly what the fund managers did. End of story.