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Verizon Communications Inc.‘s (NYSE:VZ) purchase of Yahoo Inc. (NASDAQ:YHOO) for what amounts to the fire sale price of US$4.83 billion will stand as a monument to the spectacularly squandered opportunity that the once high flying search engine competitor to Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) embodied.

It’s a pattern that repeats itself again and again among tech titans.

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The formula goes something like this: 1. Brilliant youthful founders build gigantic market share through timely and relevant product awesomeness that attracts and retains a loyal and near cult-like following. 2. Brilliant young founders, through a combination of hubris and sense of invincibility, and enchanted by their sudden transformation from pimply nobody into worshipped and rich guru, begin to be distracted by the monumental bureaucratic maintenance that demands increasing amounts of their time, resulting in an incremental withdrawal of interest in the enterprise they founded. 3. Board of directors ejects formerly pimply but now aged executives, and the revolving door of star power CEOs begins, each one extracting their pound of flesh while remedying nothing in the process. 4. Company is sold for parts to larger behemoth who absorbs the brand into its own, thus ending the life cycle of the Tech Startup that Lacked the Commitment by Founders to Go the Distance.