Back when all the cool kids were getting gmail accounts I stood firm. Even after the Person With Whom I Am Close went to work for Google, and could hardly contain her disgust at my downmarket address (barely a step above Hotmail), I remained loyal. I even pay them for the premium email, so there’s no storage limit and no dumb marketing message in the signature. I like Yahoo. I like the home page that gives me a quick view of the day’s changing headlines. I like the cheesy desperation with which they throw up home page stories on How To Know If He’s Cheating On You. Frankly, I even prefer Yahoo for search. Most of all, I like the fact that they’re not monitoring the contents of my emails. Quite the contrary: Even though they know exactly who I am and have a search history on me that goes back nearly a decade, they have never once served up an ad that seemed even remotely targeted at me. But alas, Yahoo, it seems, may soon find the one way to lose me as a customer: Become part of Microsoft. I always said I would never willingly and of-conscious-mind pay money to Microsoft for anything, and I’m not going to start now. Shareholders, you’ve been warned!