I spent my afternoon playing outside with my kids, only to come back inside, check my feeds, and see that HP is almost certainly buying EDS. HP. Buying. EDS.

I can't even wrap my head around that.

I've already wondered what's going through HP's collective head when it comes to marketing themselves in the Web 2.0 space, but this one is boggling.

I did five years at EDS. Five. Years. With a company that seemed lost in a post-Perot world with vestiges of the quasi-military Perot culture. And now HP wants to gain their own ready-made family to compete with IBM services. I'd like to know how those meetings went. Xerox just resigned their contract with EDS for $263 million LAST MONTH. Does HP really think Xerox will happily allow the newly minted HP employees on the premise to continue providing services?

The tendency to acquire instead of build is fast becoming the new way of the world. You have to wonder, however, if these companies think through how well merging companies will work in the end. My guess is Xerox is already on the phone with Perot Systems or IBM to replace EDS.