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Dave Winer got hold of the Microsoft Memos and shares them.

I worry about over-reliance on advertising-supported models. I don't know, maybe we have it all figured out now, but I get nervous thinking about some of the big dreams that came to nothing circa 1999. I sat in on pitches from outfits wanting content partners. They wouldn't exactly promise millions, but were bold enough to put 7- and 8-figure projections in writing that made mouths water. Salivation leads to hasty decisions.

The way web advertising works now with pay-per-click is more sensible than the 90s CPM way, which copied broadcast and print, but the inflated keyword bids you hear about scare the crap out of me. The prices can't hold up. I think it's like overvaluation of stocks. When the price is so freakishly higher than the real value, something's got to give.

(Of course, to be fair, value is all a matter of perception. And what I might believe is a freakishly high figure, like $30 a click for potency drugs, could hold up. I remember thinking when I lived in L.A. in the middle 80s, that California residential real estate prices couldn't continue to swell at the same dizzying rate of increase, and they sure did.)

But back to my anxious hand-wringing, because that's what I am so good at: right now we're really only talking about one major force, Google's Adsense. Sure, it's a huge pie and bits picked off it could really add up, but it's not hard to see that when Microsoft gets into the game so will its old and new partners. Unrelated big and small operations will see Microsoft playing the advertising game and figure it must be the way to go. Pretty soon there will be too many choices and an inventory glut and the rates are going to plummet.

It's all related to the Bubble 2.0 frenzy, isn't it? And it scares the living daylights out of this burn victim.

Besides all this, I get concerned for the economy when there seems to be a disproportionate share of money being made in intangibles, things you can't hold in your hand -- from market speculation to advertising to online content subscriptions. It's an odd thing for me to fret about. God knows the information business is all I've ever known or done. But when a country doesn't make anything solid anymore, leaving all the physical building to the rest of the world, somehow it seems like we're on a precarious perch.

Getting hold of the docs
Having the full original Microsoft documents is great. I woke up this morning, got online, saw what had happened, and I was proud to be a blogger.

Nice there is somebody like Dave around -- someone who
a) spotted the irony in the strained prunes spoonfeeding we were getting from Microsoft through the print media about this internet story,
b) felt a motivating sense of outrage about it, and
c) has the right combination of gravitas and chutzpah to set things right in the middle of the night.

As a former PR person, I'd love to know what happened last night, if the PR folks were routed around, if there was a huddle before handing off the goods to Dave or if somebody just Lee-Harvey-Oswalded it and "acted alone."