It's threads like this that cause economic meltdowns.
What wouldn't seem right would be if there were no bad bets. In something as risky as tech startups, most bets should be bad.
Other mature tech companies not paying dividends include Adobe, Autodesk, Apple, Cisco, EA, Activision, Intuit, Oracle, Symantec, Amazon, and Ebay. And the few that do pay dividends (IBM, HP, and Microsoft for instance) have a very low dividend yields. It seems to me that there has been a breakdown of corporate governance.
Adobe, for instance, is in the perfect position to pay dividends. It is a group of cash cows that might suddenly get destroyed by new market entrants. They're putting the money in a vault [1], but they're not paying dividends [2].
The problem, as I see it, is that companies refuse to admit they're dying. It's the weirdest thing.
[1] http://finance.google.com/finance?q=adbe [2] http://sec.edgar-online.com/2008/04/04/0001047469-08-004108/...
Now, baseball cards can be quite valuable. The price can fluctuate enormously, You can make money from investing in them. The price correlates with real world events such as batting average. But fundamentally, the value is based purely on fads, perception, herd behavior, and marketing. At any time, the floor can drop out. The price can plummet and never recover ( baseball cards were my first investing experience and I'm still scarred :-) )
A dividend paying stock has fundamental value. As long as the company's business remains strong, you will earn money from owning the stock, even if everybody else in the world believes it is worthless.