The reign of the stupid:

The reign of the stupid
: As it turns out, the biggest loss in the history of American business and the worst deal in the history of American business and the fall that will mark the end of an era in American business — the vaporizing of the bubble that symbolized the previous era — are not the result of vain greed, as we’ve been saying about Silicon (Death) Valley. No, AOL Time Warner was the result of stupidity, plain, old, simple, avoidable stupidity. It was stupid to think that AOL was going to keep growing. It was stupid to believe that AOL was making as much money as they said. It was stupid of AOL to mistreat its customers for so long. It was stupid of Time Warner to think that its customers would give an F about a holding pen for its brands called Pathfinder, which resulted in the strategic panic and aggressive stupidity that led to the AOL deal. It was incredibly, terribly, destructively, monumentally, historically, shamefully stupid to let themselves be bought by AOL. It was just plain stupid, that’s all. At least the greedy fools of Silicon Valley were smart. The fools of AOL Time Warner were just dumb.