A while back I suggested that Yahoo! buy Pronetos, writing a very polite letter to Terry Semel. Well, Mr. Semel is no longer employed there. I am sure that Jerry Yang was probably outraged to learn that Mr. Semel never did make an offer to Pronetos, and fired him in a barrage of four letter words. And why wouldn’t he? Heck, by Microsoft’s math, any sucker with an algorithm can wheedle up a billion dollar market cap. Check it out:

Even gathering the crumbs of business left behind by Google could generate a lofty market capitalization. Don Dodge, a Microsoft manager who works outside of the company’s search group, made this argument in a post on his personal blog last month: “Why 1% of Search Market Share Is Worth Over $1 Billion.” Mr. Dodge reasoned that 1 percent of the 7.3 billion searches performed in the United States in March, multiplied by 12 cents in advertising revenue per search, would yield annualized revenue of $105 million. Assuming a market cap that is 10 times revenue, his arithmetic leads to a billion-dollar company.

So, Mr. Yang, we are getting ready to launch Pronetos, probably later today. LGM would be willing to offload Pronetos for, I don’t know $700 or $800 million. But that’s just today. I mean c’mon, all we need is 1% and we’ve got a billion company! Wow! I take it all back! Zuckerberg might be right, eh? Facebook is probably worth more than Wal-Mart.

NOTE: Some or all portions of the above post may be in jest.