At the Kelsey conference in Santa Clara, I had a discussion this week with an executive in the advertising business that had this interesting comment about how secretive Google was, and still is today, and that I found sort of related to Wired story about Yahoo's failed execution to catch on Google:

Google stayed very quiet for a long time and if it weren't for the fact that Yahoo had an investment in Google and throught that investment got access to Google's financials, Google probably would have stayed private longer and Yahoo would never bought Overture or been able to respond

So in retrospect, Terry Semel's plan B was not that insightful. He had the numbers, he just needed to find a company to buy to counter Google's growth. Fairly easy for an Über-deal master he was (still is?).