The question of what Chrysler is going to do under Cerberus Capital Management is a fascinating one, since so many of the strategies typically pursued by private equity-owned companies run directly at odds to those adopted by the Detroit Big Three in the past couple of decades.

All the indications are from briefings given by Jim Press, Chrysler’s vice-chairman, here and here are that it will not only try to shrink the typically bloated product line up of Detroit companies but will also take on its dealers, which have been a drag on restructuring. That is quite a departure from the normal Detroit way of doing things.

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Good Lord. Talking of internal memos to staff, here is one sent out today by Roger Ailes, chief executive of Fox News. Unlike Jerry Yang’s, Mr Ailes’ memo is written with meticulous clarity, as befits one of the great media communicators (I make no judgement about the message, just how it is expressed).

His message to staff is: Quit whining and, if you don’t like working here, don’t let the door hit you on the way out. Actually, there is no need to paraphrase because that is pretty much exactly what he writes.

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Company-wide emails to staff are generally an imperfect way to communicate, since a chief executive cannot say anything too interesting for fear of a) it getting leaked or b) breaking financial disclosure rules.

The trick is to seem personable and appealing and generally leave people who bother to read the thing feeling a little bit happier than before.

By this standard, I think Jerry Yang’s leaked email to Yahoo employees following Microsoft’s hostile $44.6bn bid fails. The problem is that it suffers from cognitive dissonance.

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My Financial Times column this week is about Microsoft-Yahoo and the efforts of technology companies to revolutionise the selling of display advertisements on the internet. I am sceptical. You can give your views below.

Further to my ode to the joys of Nestle’s Nespresso machine the other day, here is the New York Times obituary of Ernesto Illy of Illycaffè fame. He ran "the Bell Labs of coffee" in Trieste before Starbucks had opened its first store in Seattle.

Amid the uproar about Microsoft bidding for Yahoo, you may have missed the news that Yahoo is closing its subscription music service and instead throwing its weight behind Rhapsody.

Subscription music services, which offer you unlimited access to streamed music through your personal computer (and through your stereo, if you have the right equipment) are favoured by a lot of people in the music industry, and cognoscenti outside it, as the industry’s new financial model.

Instead of buying music, you in effect rent it for $12 to $15 per month. This turns music into a subscription service rather like cable or satellite television.

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Google is going to have to do better than this if it wants to frighten regulators and politicians into blocking Microsoft’s $44.6bn bid for Yahoo.

It is a bit half-baked to issue a statement (actually, not even an official statement but a blog post, for heaven’s sake) that raises worries about Microsoft distorting the internet without providing evidence, or even explaining what it means.

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Having just had the satisfaction of sitting in New York watching the New York Giants win the Superbowl, I have had plenty of time to reflect on Simon Kuper’s article in the Weekend FT on why US sports have not spread around the world like British sports - notably soccer and cricket.

Among the oddities of American football is, of course, the fact that a game that only takes an hour on the clock actually lasts for three hours or more. The drama is even more drawn out by the proliferation of Superbowl ads, which can be viewed here and briefly summarised here.

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The thing that immediately strikes me about Microsoft’s $44.6bn bid for Yahoo is that this is a good time for companies to have cash. Microsoft has so much that it can afford to offer Yahoo investors the money half in cash and half in shares, which is an impressive feat these days.

Actually, Microsoft’s cash pile at the end of last year was quite modest compared with the past. It had only $21bn in cash and short-term equivalents, compared with its peak of $64bn in September 2004, so it could not get out its wallet for the entire amount. Still that is hardly close to running an overdraft.

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