These proportions (gasoline vs diesel) are not fixed and we know how to modify them since 1912. Thermal cracking

I tried "Is Tesla still dead?"
I tried "What is WolframAlpha?"
I even tried "How many legs does cat have?"
Nothing works.

It is not for Yahoo. They can buy Yahoo with shares. It is for something else.
How about Accenture?

It makes sense. Accenture is in IT consulting and has access to senior executives, CIOs and even CEO of Fortune 500 companies. If you want to convince these guys to move to Microsoft Cloud you need good consultants.

Steve Ballmer was on Board of Directors of Accenture until 3 years ago so he knows the company and how it can help Microsoft.

Cash would be needed to pay off Accenture partners.

Just a speculation, but a plausible one.

Some time ago I offered my wife (who is by trade a Sociologist) $500 for a report that would help me understand the phenomenon of the growing popularity of Twitter. I waited a week than a month but in the end she did not produce the report, claiming that she could neither understand the phenomenon nor the purpose of the service.

But recently, when queried on the topic she admitted giving it some serious consideration and that she simply concluded that her findings were too obvious for a report. After long conversation (and many misunderstandings) I found her thoughts fascinating. I summarize them below:

The key theme is self expression.
It is important to switch to that mode while reading below points (it took me a while to understand my wife's point). We tend to perceive Internet as a medium of sharing and exchanging ideas. We forget that while people care about access to information, they care more about themselves. They want to be heard and understood.

The available tools for self expression are complicated.
My initial reaction to that claim was that there are plenty of tools and that they are getting better, more sophisticated, more intuitive and simpler to use. Over the past 15 years these tools offered more and more opportunities to self express. There were discussion lists, message boards, Geocities [sic], blogs, and finally social networks like Myspace where people could easily upload pictures, connect with friends and discuss topics. Now, we have Facebook with all of that and universe of applications created by independent developers.

But that is not the point.

To participate in message board discussion I have to read other posts and construct a message. (Some people might not like my message, disagree with it or even call me an idiot). To start a blog I must come up with a topic, to post new pictures I must acquire new pictures (hopefully of myself or exciting places I visited). Being on Myspace or Facebook is even more complicated as I must acquire friends, produce some sensible posts and share some cool pictures of myself. Not an easy task regardless of technology at hand.

Twitter solves the "nothing to say" problem of self expression.
Twitter with 'What are you doing right now' and 140 characters limit solves the problem for people who have nothing to say. (With that setup everyone is equally brilliant and idiotic.) There is no pressure to come up with something meaningful. This self expression is simple and obvious. It is a total self indulgent. ("Twit of the Year" kind of thing.) What am I doing right now? There is no way to make self expression simpler. There are no conversations, no critique, no meaning. There is a reason why there are no groups on Twitter. Twitter is not about particular topic or subject, it is all about me.

Twitter makes you feel important
There is a reason why PR of Twitter is focused more on celebrities than any campaign for any other Internet service has been before. You tweet and Britney Spears tweets. You send your thoughts into Al Gore's Internet with the same ease and quality - 140 words. No groups, no conversations, no topics. With growing popularity and media coverage it is even better. You send you thoughts to Twitter and then you see Twitter mentioned on TV.

This is the summary of my conversation with my wife.

I as an economist must add my thoughts on how they will make money. I will make three points:

Search is a Big Thing due to advertising money that come with it.

Google, Microsoft and Yahoo search results are similar in quality (links to wikipedia).
Most people (not nerds) do not even know/remember that Google was the Yahoo search engine. What makes Google different now is the place it occupies in hearts and minds. Microsoft tried to attack that with advertising and failed miserably.

Twitter will attempt to establish a new paradigm that what matters in search is a real time search.
It will not attack Google at its core - Search. Instead it will invent new kind of search that will be more relevant to people (or so they will learn) and that, by the way, Twitter is best positioned to service - Real Time Search. "What Is Happening Right Now" kind of search.

PS
I shared my wife's thoughts on Twitter with my professor. He summarized it in a way that I find extremely accurate. "Twitter is like whistling" he said.

Thank you for your detailed response.

I suspected there was a reason why the stuff I linked to was not a mainstream science. Now, thanks to you, I know why. I may even check out the book you recommend if I can order it from my library.

Thanks again.

They live inside us, so can they influence our decision-making ?!#?

There seems to be at least one scientist that believes so. Dr. Jaroslav Flegr from Prague Charles University (founded in 1348 is one of the oldest universities in the world and nowadays is one of the most eminent educational and scientific establishments in the Czech Republic) published some mind-blowing discoveries.

Dr. Flegr's claim is a simple one. Microbes influence YOUR decision-making.

You will find the presentation here http://www.natur.cuni.cz/~flegr/toxo_slides/index.php

If you dare to reach slide 14 you will learn that:
"The infected women had higher affectothymia, which means, they were more warm-hearted, outgoing, easygoing. They had also higher superego strength, which means, they were more conscientious, persistent, moralistic, staid. Both men and women had higher guilt proneness."

Now, why this is not a mainstream science I do not know. But I will leave it for you to decide.

You can research that or you can go to flickr.com and type "Empire Builder" in the search box and see some really cool photos.

The choice is yours...
(or is it?)