Speaking to the Financial Times, Microsoft's Chief Software Architect Raymond Ozzie commented last week when asked about the likely trajectory of any Microsoft-Yahoo! integration, if the companies did indeed ever merge: 'Technology companies, if they dive in and just smash things together for smashing them together's sake, it's reckless, it's just simply reckless.'

Ozzie told the FT that he was “very optimistic” that Microsoft could pull off the main goals of the deal, however. 

The trick was not to hurry to get all the financial and other benefits from a consolidation of the two companies’ operations, while neglecting the corporate cultural issues: "“They have a number of different types of technologies. They have their own corporate culture,” Ozzie told the Financial Times.