Especially the one that includes winners and losers. Cool guys and nerds. I was having lunch yesterday with my friend Duncan Watts, who is now at Yahoo, and who got slightly worked up about when we started talking about, what he saw as regularly distorted, portrayal of Yahoo by media. While Duncan has no illusion about how media operate, something else got my attention in his rant [no, it was not stepping down of Jerry Yang]. Apparently, Google was not first to come up with its "Flu Trends." Turns out Yahoo has done the same research on the same topic six months earlier - yes, before Google - and published it to the sound of silence. Then came Google research ... and - poof - NYT breaking story. Which, truth to be told, does acknowledge that Yahoo has done something similar, but read the lingo for yourself: "The premise behind Google Flu Trends ... has been validated by an unrelated study indicating that the data collected by Yahoo ... can also help with early detection of the flu." Really?: "can also help" & "validated by an unrelated study" - that sounds really really enthusiastic - you got me truly excited there about Yahoo. Also, how can something that happened earlier validate something that is happening now? Isn't Google study actually validating Yahoo one, since it was released later? Oh well. Ok, this may be the place to also say that while Google is one of my favorite digital brands, and that I use all possible Google services, and I in fact really think that Yahoo! is lame [I guess that's just the Zeitgeist], I cannot help but actually realizing that there's something weird about this witch hunt. In order to have a winner, you seemingly need to have a loser (MSFT is just too boring to be part of the equation. In some different story tho, it may have also been regarded as a big bad wolf (albeit one with the *human* face of Jerry Seinfeld) that patiently waits to devour the loser). In any event, the point is that in reality - that seemingly no one cares about - Yahoo is really not that troubled. Monday's NYT article starts with "Here’s a new parlor game in Silicon Valley: guessing who will replace Jerry Yang at the helm of the troubled Internet giant Yahoo". And now some facts: "Whatever the Yahoo board decides to do, it still has some considerable assets with which to work. The company still attracts 500 million users a month, is the leading Web e-mail service, and has other profitable Internet franchises in news, sports and video. It also remains one of the top brands on the Internet." Hm, not so bad. Much less "troubled". Why is this information tucked at the end of the ranting about Yahoo's alleged doom? Simply, it does not fit in the story. In a winner-takes-all society, someone's really got to be a loser. Even if he is not.