As has been reported, Microsoft has all but taken over Nokia. The gist? Both companies recognize that a vertically integrated approach is a necessity for anyone who wants to make products that matter—product ecosystems that matter—in the mobile world.

But isn't Nokia notorious for being an engineering focused organization, and doesn't Microsoft have to keep up the pretense of the arms-length, just-another-partner relationship? How is this going to lead to the creation of game-changing products, even if there are world class engineers, designers, and business people on both sides of this collaboration? And a game-changing product—a series of products, really—is what's needed if either of these companies hopes to be even remotely relevant.

The Next crew was able to charge the gangplank and take over the Apple mothership, because Next was the seat of Apple's government in exile, Steve Jobs's Saint Helena (to mix metaphors). Mid-nineties Apple had lost its mojo, its soul, and the prospect of a takeover was invigorating.

If anyone believes that there's any analogy to deploy with Microsoft and Nokia, they're crazy. I didn't even want to put that sentence in the previous paragraph, the idea's so crazy.

There's also the small problem that is Microsoft's doomed-to-fail iPad-response-slash-tablet-strategy. What are they going to put there in the middle, between their dominant Windows PC operating system and their relatively well-reviewed most-recent phone OS? That iOS, previously "the iPhone OS," could Provide a good user experience was an open question, and I'd need to be convinced that Windows Phone 7 can work on a tablet. (Does anyone seriously think it would?)