Honestly, Eric Schmidt and Steve Ballmer must be muttering to themselves. Why don't they just give up? Why do these also-rans insist on making life difficult for us?

First AOL gets it into its head that it's going to muscle in on the social networking scene with its acquisition of Bebo. So the poster child of the walled garden version of the Internet is trying to reinvent itself as a Web 2.0 property. Good luck, chumps. As Clint Boulton points out, AOL has already paid a billion simoleons for six ad-oriented properties.

Meanwhile, Yahoo has decided to crash the semantic Web party in an effort to out-Google Google, as Eric Schonfeld so elegantly explained.

Yahoo has also been blithely wheeling and dealing as if Microsoft hadn't ever made an offer.

So what is it with these guys? Don't they know when they've been beaten? Don't they know it's time to take their marbles and go wherever it is that defeated politicians and out-maneuvered business leaders go? (I believe it's called cable TV)

Ah, I guess not. Well, here's hoping that all that extra competition actually results in better products, and better politics.