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by Teresa Martin

It almost seems anti-climactic. After endless flirtations, fights, and fits of founder pride, the on-again/off-again relationship between Yahoo and Microsoft was finally officially consummated this week. It's not exactly the marriage that was once proposed, but rather a more modest sort of living-together-for-10-years agreement.

The deal is something along the lines of: Microsoft will bring Bing and servers and Yahoo will bring a sales force and everyone will live happily ever after ... and maybe that pesky over-achieving neighbor Google won't even bother us so much anymore.

Or, as the formal announcement says, "In simple terms, Microsoft will now power Yahoo search while Yahoo will become the exclusive worldwide relationship sales force for both companies' premium search advertisers."

The two companies are careful to note that other services - email, web content, etc. - will still compete and that no sort of regulatory flag should be raised. And there are a lot of the usual statements about synergies and the like. And of course, there's the photo op images of Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz and Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer signing the agreement with a giant Yahoo-hued purple pen.

But it sort of feels a bit like watching that high-drama high school couple from a post-school perspective. For years you followed their ups and downs and took sides and had a lot of emotion over their relative merits. But then, well, once everyone graduated, the king and queen of the prom weren't quite so exciting any more. They were just a couple of people making a deal with each other.

If there were a theme song here, it would be Billy Joel singing about Brenda and Eddie.

Three years ago, two years ago, even one year ago, Yahoo and Microsoft inking a deal would have been a whole other kind of story. Yup, it is interesting today, but more in a business-world, what-does-it mean-for-stock-value sort of way, not in a titans-of-the industry-passion sort of way.

For one thing, the scope is different. Last winter, Yahoo turned down Microsoft's bid to buy it for $41.6 billion. Today, Yahoo's market value is about half that, $21 billion.

For another, we now have Google, aka the undisputed king of search, talking operating systems. The once-underdog is now moving to the Microsoft monopoly role in the ongoing saga of tech. Suddenly a Yahoo-Microsoft deal almost feels like a bow to reality, or maybe even a way to tilt the balance of power back to the middle again.

In addition, the high profile founders - Jerry Yang and Bill Gates - aren't in the mix. The companies are represented by professional management. Don't think for a second that Carol Bartz and Steve Ballmer aren't strong, powerful, and colorful personalities - but they aren't the founders.

Founder passion - for both its good and its bad - always has a certain, errr, strong entertainment value. Bill Gates has, of course, long since matured into a role of chairman of the company and has a day-to-day focus on the work of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Jerry Yang was pushed out of his leadership role Yahoo last year, partly from fallout over the non-deal with Microsoft. (Yang and co-founder David Filo are still listed as founder and Chief Yahoos in the official Yahoo materials, in a small nod to history.)

So with Yahoo and Microsoft today, in this long debated agreement, it is all business. How can each get what the other needs, how can they face off the looming giant Google, how can they keep returns high and shareholders happy ... these are the issues that CFOs and analysts love, and that this deal is all about. How it meets those goals has yet to be seen; the first day of the announcement, Yahoo shareholders were bailing and the company's stock dropped more than 10 percent.

The other questions - Like, how can we be great? How can we do cool things for customers? How can we create something no one has ever created before? How can we make a tool that works smarter for people? - Ah, those questions were once asked by Microsoft and Yahoo, but not today. Today was about careful statements and maximizing returns.

I love making money and a given the choice, I would definitely elect to make a profit. It is much better to have cash than not. I think carrying on business is important and attending to business issues matters. And yet, and yet ...

I read the news with resignation, not for any philosophical belief in what relationship Microsoft and Yahoo should or should not have, but with the realization that another little bit of light from an era has gone.

You loved to hate Brenda and Eddie. Or, maybe you wanted to be them. Or you got a kick out of mocking them and all they stood for. No matter what, it was fun to watch the high drama. And now, they've grown up and instead of crazy late nights at the diner we have to settle for scripted announcements and carefully managed professional moments.