Give this to Steve Ballmer: After getting roundly hammered in the past few years for either missing out on deals (see: AOL/Google) or paying too much for the ones he did land (see: Facebook at $15 billion), he seems to be on a roll.
Last week, Microsoft was roundly praised for the way it structured its Yahoo (YHOO) deal. And today, the company seems to have struck a smart pact with Publicis, which will pay $530 million for Redmond's Razorfish digital ad agency, which Ballmer never wanted anyway. And the French ad giant will agree to buy a certain amount of search and display inventory from Microsoft over the next five years.
Read the whole story on AllThingsD
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