I got to my hotel room and, as usual, checked my e-mail first thing. One that caught my eye was from Stata Labs, the startup that makes Bloomba, the fabulous e-mail client I use. “We thank you for your support of Bloomba and SAproxy Pro and want to share some exciting news. As of today, we are now part of the Yahoo! family through Yahoo!?s acquisition of Stata Labs.”

Okay, I thought. What does this mean to me? The e-mail includes some FAQs and I scrolled through them until I got to this part: “At this time there are no plans for Yahoo! to sell Bloomba.” Stata will support the product for a year. After that, that’s it. God knows what Yahoo! will do with the company, since Bloomba and the SAproxy Pro spam filter are all they do. Stata offers only this cryptic answer: “This acquisition will provide Yahoo! with exceptional technological expertise and strategic assets.”

Yeah, great. And I have to return to Outlook. There’s a lesson here. Sometimes you’re better off sticking with the tried-and-true even if a startup releases a better product. At least I know Microsoft isn’t going anywhere.