Welcome to the Silicon Valley hype cycle: One year, and you're over. That seems to be the consensus on Facebook's vaunted platform, whose one-year anniversary went largely unremarked. The company itself didn't blog about it until today, and sources tell us an open-bar party Facebook held in Palo Alto was low-key to the point of despair. It can't have helped that Google was throwing a massive party in San Francisco the same day to close out its conference for developers. How different a scene from a year ago, when the F8 launch event of Facebook Platform won comparisons of the company to Microsoft and of founder Mark Zuckerberg to Bill Gates.

The Federal Trade Commission says corporate raider Carl Icahn should feel free to buy more large blocks of Yahoo shares. At last count, Icahn already owned 4.3 percent of Yahoo. Shareholders allied with his view on the Microsoft-Yahoo merger — that it should happen — now control at least 31 percent of the company. Too bad for them it seems less likely every day that Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer — or really, chairman Bill Gates — wants to go back down that road.

In April, Microsoft CFO Chris Liddell said the company was not feeling the effects of any economic slow down. Now its is, reports Global Equities Research analyst Trip Chowdhry.

CARLSBAD, CA — The other night, Gizmodo editor Brian Lam and I were talking about what he'd learned about Bill Gates's brain. Our conclusion: Like an overstuffed hard drive, he needs defragging — the utility that rebuilds a drive bit by bit to put it in proper working order. Buried in software wizardry, Gates has lost touch with what people want to do with technology. But why pick on Gates? None of the speakers at the D6 conference, held in this Southern California seaside town, have shown they have much in the way of ideas.

"Guys like us avoid monopolies. We like to compete." — Microsoft chairman Bill Gates, whose company remains under antitrust supervision, at the All Things Digital conference Tuesday.

In this clip, excerpted from Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher's interview with Microsoft chairman Bill Gates and CEO Steve Ballmer at the All Things D conference down in Carlsbad, Ballmer explains how Gates hired him during his first year at Stanford business school. Ballmer says Gates called him up and lamented the fact that he "didn't have a twin" he could hire to work at Microsoft. The best part of the tale? Ballmer's voice impersonation of Gates on phone — all squeaky and high-pitched — with his Gatesness sitting right there.

After being kicked out of D6 — kicked out of mere proximity to D6, really — I learned I didn't miss much. Want a summary of Bill Gates's presentation at D6 of Windows Seven, Microsoft's supposedly exciting new operating system with multitouch features similar to the year-old Apple iPhone? "Windows Seven is bullshit," says Gizmodo editor Brian Lam. Here's to more insights like that at the Four Seasons hotel bar! The highlights reel, in case you're in doubt:

Why didn't Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer follow through on his threat to take his $33 per share offer for Yahoo to its shareholders? Because Microsoft chairman Bill Gates tapped the brakes, reports Kara Swisher. "Numerous sources" say Gates didn't want a Yahoo merger as a way to solve Microsoft's online problems, but figured as CEO of the company, Ballmer should have free rein.

Design blog Signal vs. Noise today reminded everyone of the 1997 Times infographic reproduced above. Nicholas Kristof, whose article on world disease featured the chart, declared in an old-but-recently-surfaced email that "no graphic in human history has saved so many lives in Africa and Asia." Apparently it persuaded billionaire Bill Gates to start donating his money to disease prevention instead of global internet access. Kristof said the Microsoft founder was too lazy to read the full, 3,500-world article:

The legendary site in England where the Nazis' communication code was finally broken, Bletchley Park, has hit hard times. The land is being eyed by developers eager to build on the spot situated perfectly between Oxford and Cambridge. Among possible funders who turned the opportunity down was the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation — reportedly because it wasn't "Internet related."

"Every surface will be a computer." So spake Bill Gates at the annual CEO Summit, sounding much like himself a few decades ago when he promised a computer on every desk. Since then we've collectively turned our laps and our pockets into computing centers as well. So why not walls and tables, like the new TouchWall unveiled today? While Gates defined "every surface" as being in homes and offices, we here at Valleywag couldn't drag our minds out of the gutter long enough to think of the top 5 unexpected places where surface computing just might take hold.

Intellectual property is, in many ways, my family's business. And over the years my mother Mary Deaton and I have had more than a few heated arguments about copyright reform. That said, my mom has been using Microsoft Windows since before Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg shed his diapers, and was ripping CDs to MP3 since I bought her a Rio MP3 player for Christmas with my dot-boom winnings. Since then, she bought into the system and signed up with MTV's now defunct Urge digital music service. But thanks to digital rights management, or DRM, RealNetworks CEO Rob Glaser is punishing her for such law-abiding ways — and charging her $14.99 a month for these "feature." Seems that in being migrated, like other Urge users, to Real's Rhapsody service, my mom lost the ability to transfer her music to her MP3 player or burn it to CD as promised. What ensued is a case study in bad customer service and the consumer-punishing idiocy that is DRM, and it's all after the jump.

Sure, Microsoft would buy Facebook, but management knows Zuckerberg's not going to sell — and unlike Yang, he controls his company's board. As for Yahoo, well, "Yahoo can twist," one source told BoomTown. "Microsoft has lots and lots of other options." Redmond's favorite? Granola. Microsoft's internal plans for a post-Yahoo reality are code-named "Project Granola" because the company now wants to grow its online properties "organically," like every hippy's favorite breakfast food. But to us, the name seems utterly fitting in its blandness: Microsoft chairman Bill Gates told the WSJ that Microsoft's big plans include more "advances" in search, more marketing and more meetings in Redmond, Washington. That kind of bureaucratic strategy sounds like management needs a high colonic, not just more dietary fiber. (Photo by Adry Long)

Microsoft's board yesterday gave CEO Steve Ballmer "broad discretion" to decide on his own whether Microsoft should raise its offer for Yahoo, initiate a proxy fight for the company or walk away, the Wall Street Journal reports. That means if Ballmer makes the wrong call, it could cost him his job. Ballmer took over day-to-day operations from Bill Gates in 2000 and lately, things haven't gone well for the company. Vista is broken and the latest rumor is that a new operating system, Windows Seven, won't come out until 2010. And, despite Microsoft's push into online advertising, including a $6 billion buy of aQuantive, Ballmer's $44.6 billion bid for Yahoo is an admission that Microsoft's strategy has failed. Microsoft still only commands a mere 9.4 percent of the search engine market. We think he should walk away, but doing nothing carries its own risks. If Ballmer blows it on Yahoo, would anyone blame Gates for wanting to leave the company in better hands before he retires this summer?

Who are "the Yawns"? They're the young and wealthy but normal. Be-sweatered Microsoft chairman Bill Gates is their patron saint, according to Robert Frank of the WSJ's Wealth Report. This boring single-prop set prize their charity foundations, recycled t-shirts and charity bracelets as their favorite status symbols. They drive hybrid cars. And the pandemic is spreading, reports the AP's Evelyen Nieves. She profiles San Francisco's Rik Wehbring, for an example. A perfectly healthy "37-year-old dot.com millionaire" Wehbring, despite his wealth, limits himself to living on $50,000 a year. Nieves reports he "doesn't own a television, his mp3 player cost $20 ("and it works just fine") and he drives (when he drives) a Toyota Prius."

Bill Gates has long dreamed of getting his customers to pay by the month, not by the shrinkwrapped box, for his software. As the Microsoft founder gets ready to depart, his company is just barely realizing his vision. But this is Microsoft, so they're doing it in the most asinine manner imaginable. Mary Jo Foley reports that Microsoft is testing a package of software and services, codenamed "Albany," for which consumers will pay a monthly fee. Sounds promising, until you dig into what Microsoft is actually offering.

Yahoo Amr Awadallah loves his company like a Spartan loves ripply abs and bulbous pectoral muscles. So he and some friends slapped some subtitles over Zack Snyder's 300 to make a 10-minute short called Yahoo 300. We excerpt the best scene above. Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang is King Leonidas; Bill Gates is Xerxes. Sue Decker is Sarah Connor ... er, Queen Gorgo.

Forbes magazine reports that, worth $58 billion, Bill Gates is no longer the world's richest man. He's the third-richest. Although more than half of his wealth is invested outside Microsoft, Gates can likely blame the bad news on his oldest buddy. Steve Ballmer's unsolicited bid for Yahoo tanked Gates's net worth. Between the day before Ballmer announced the bid and February 11, when Forbes finished its accounting, Microsoft shares fell 15 percent. (Photo by Esparta)

Announcing Microsoft Online Services yesterday, Microsoft chairman Bill Gates let fly on Google. "Their economic model is based on consumer search," Gates said.

Today at an event in Seattle, Bill Gates will announce Microsoft Online Services: email, calendars, contact lists, video conferencing for small and medium-sized businesses. To start, Microsoft will offer free access to the services, which are online versions of Microsoft products Exchange, Office, and SharePoint. Someday Microsoft hopes to charge, but for now, the plan is to halt Google's encroachment. Microsoft executive Chris Capossel told the WSJ he expects half of the company's Exchange customers to be using the new service in five years. batmoo)