Question for Henry Blodget's many detractors: Are you mad that Michael Milken has become respectable?

Blodget and Milken symbolized the excesses of their internet bubble and 1980s respectively. Both were punished for their misdeeds. Milken, who went to prison, now devotes his time to his philanthropic work and an economic think tank. Blodget received a lifetime ban from the securities industry, a punishment he deserved.

Now pundits including MarketWatch's David Weidner and my colleague Zac Bissonnette say they are outraged that Blodget's writing is published in leading news outlets including the New York Times. What about Milken? Bloomberg News just interviewed him about the housing crisis. Should my former employer have killed the story given Milken's notorious past? Of course not.

Milken did his time and paid his fines. He's a brilliant man who still has plenty of interesting things to say. Same goes for Blodget. To be clear, investors shouldn't forgive or forget them for what they did. As far as I know Blodget has stayed out of legal trouble since he was banned from the securities industry. In 1998, Milken agreed to pay a $47 million fine to settle an SEC complaint that he violated his lifetime ban.

This post is part of our Battle of the Brands feature. Let us know which brand you prefer, and watch out for more Battle of the Brands posts.

Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ: YHOO) was the shining star of the internet bubble in 2000, just before the dot-com crash, and has managed to keep a huge customer base (tens of millions, if not hundreds of millions based on how you calculate it). Yahoo! customers are loyal apparently, even though Google has trounced Yahoo! in recent years in terms of search popularity and overall brand awareness. Like Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG), Yahoo! was founded by Stanford grad students, Jerry Yang and David Filo, so that information on the web could be more easily found back when the web was in its infancy -- 1995.

From 1995 to 2001, Yahoo! grew at a rapid clip, and then saw a downward spiral as advertising fortunes started collapsing at the same time Google's "text ad" advertising model started growing by leaps and bounds. It's pretty obvious by now that Yahoo!'s "one ad for all" approach grew quite stale (and so did its revenues) at the same time Google's "customer relevant" and unobtrusive ad model grew an an inversely proportionate rate. Yahoo! has made great strides on the comeback trail under five-year CEO and Hollywood expert Terry Semel, who has modeled Yahoo! as a "relationship builder" to customers (and gotten them to pay for certain services).

This model is quite opposed to Google's "tool-based" customer model that can't touch Yahoo!'s model for creating and enhancing actual relationships with paying customers, beyond just providing easy internet tools for customers while keeping that "relationship" quite distant. Yahoo! shares spit almost three years ago, but have remained between $29 and $44 per share since that time. By contrast, Google's shares have skyrocketed from $85 in August 2004 to over $460 today. In terms of an investment over the past five years, it's hard to draw a conclusion since Google has been publicly traded for less than three years, while Yahoo! has been traded for quite a bit longer than that.

I am legitimately embarrassed for being excited about this, but I can't help it. Henry Blodget, the disgraced former Merrill Lynch internet analyst has a new book out entitled The Wall Street Self-Defense Manual: A Consumer's Guide to Intelligent Investing. In spite of the scathing review in today's New York Times, I couldn't help rushing to Amazon.com to order it.

For those of you who don't remember Henry Blodget, he first gained notoriety in December of 1998 for his prediction that Amazon.com would go to 400 dollars, which it did, rising 128% in less than a month. In 2003, the SEC charged him with securities fraud, basically alleging that he acted as a shill for Merrill's investment banking arm. He sent emails to colleagues describing stocks he covered in vastly different terms than his glowing reports recommending them. On June 3, 2000, he wrote that ``ATHM (At Home Excite) is such a piece of crap!'' That same day, he issued a buy rating on the stock. On December 4th of the same year, he wrote about Lifeminders Inc. (LFMN): ``I can't believe what a POS thing is.'' Seventeen days later, Blodget reiterated his ``accumulate/buy'' rating on the stock. He settled the charges without admitting guilt, paid a hefty fine (though he still kept millions in what most consider to be ill-gotten gains), and was banned from the securities industry for life.

A few years ago, Blodget was interviewed for Maggie Mahar's amazing book Bull!: A History of the Boom and Bust 1982-2004. Referring to the internet stock bubble, he said that "Have you ever read John Kenneth Galbraith's book about the history of bubbles?...Well I just finished it. It's amazing how Galbraith spells it all out--what happens in every bubble every time. He's almost yawning as he lays it out: First a new thing comes along and captures the public's imagination. Then everyone starts making money. After that, some person of average intelligence is held up as a genius...Hi, the was me."

I found Blodget's self-effacing commentary and insightful realization of his role in the bubble interesting. However New York Times writer Harry Hurt III isn't impressed with his new book:

MAYBE I'm brain-damaged, but all that just rubs me the wrong way. I believe that everyone has a right to free speech regardless of past transgressions. By the same token, everyone has the right to evaluate speech and speakers, as well as the right to vote with their pocketbooks. The advice that Mr. Blodget now offers may be sound, but it's also rather mundane. Would a similar book written by Joe Blow attract similar attention?

Which brings us back to the larger question that began our inquiry: whether to invest or not to invest in financial misconduct. I don't buy That Henry's rehabilitation, and I don't recommend that you buy his book. In keeping with publishing-industry custom, I received a free review copy.

But I hereby state in public that I've already given my review copy the same kind of treatment that the author used to give certain Internet stocks in private - I've trashed it.

Still, I'm buying a copy, mainly because I love a redemption story, even if it's somewhat disingenuous, as Blodget's may appear to be. For a really good redemption story, check out ex-con Barry Minkow's book Cleaning Up: One Man's Redemptive Journey Through the Seductive World of Corporate Crime.

Steve Case is "sorry" for the AOL merger with Time Warner (TWX). That's what he said to Charlie Rose Friday. I've seen this characterized as a Steve Case "apology" (to shareholders who lost about $200 billion in share value, I guess) but I read it more as a regret things didn't work out as he expected. Apologies don't usually include the statements like Case's that he still thinks the merger was "a good idea."

Now we have left the bubble long behind us. With hindsight it is certainly easy to beat up on the guy, and that's been a lot of fun for a lot of pundits since 2001. Trying to look back on my own feelings about it at the time, I thought the deal would be a bad one for competition, part of the inevitable, but disturbing gathering of the reigns of large corporations into fewer and fewer hands, but -- much as cringe to admit it -- I never imagined the deal would be disastrous for AOL and Time Warner Inc. themselves.

I'm wondering what BloggingStocks reader think. Did you believe back in 2001 was Case making the right decision by merging Time Warner into his AOL? Or did you believe even then the merger was headed for disaster?