Blogging provides a platform for anyone to cast their views out into the world, whether to share with a few friends, be found by strangers via a search engine, or to build an audience.

Marc Andreessen started blogging last June and has written several posts that are a "must read" for tech entrepreneurs (among others). Today's post is useful for any investor who ventures beyond index funds to choosing specific stocks: In praise of dual-class stock structures for public companies.

A few highlights:

I used to be an absolutist against dual-class stock structures
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After 15 years in the technology industry, though, I have done a complete 180-degree turn on the topic -- with some caveats.
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the markets in which companies operate, and Wall Street in particular, throw up all kinds of short- and medium-term noise in the face of every public company, all the time.
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The huge advantage of a dual-class stock structure is that it lets the company's core management simply ignore most of this stuff and stay focused on the long-term goal.

If you're not convinced, read the whole thing.

Andreessen applies his thoughts directly to current events.

How would you apply this to the drama unfolding around Microsoft and Yahoo?

Well, clearly, if Jerry Yang and David Filo had dual-class-powered voting control of Yahoo, the whole situation there would be playing out very differently.

Microsoft would have been forced to negotiate a purely friendly deal from the very start, and at a price that would have caught Jerry and David's attention from the start. Hostile threats would have been meaningless. ... And the company could have been entirely focused on current operations the whole time -- no distraction.