Ballmer turns his back on desperate Yahoo

NEW KING OF THE VOLES Steve Ballmer has told a roomful of Aussies that Microsoft is not interested in going back and making yet another pass at Yahoo, no matter how much Jerry Yang begs.

Wrapping up a quick trip Down Under, Ballmer spoke at a business lunch in Sydney where he noted Microsoft had gotten over its failed bid to buy Yahoo, and was moving on.

"We made an offer, we made another offer, and it was clear that Yahoo didn't want to sell the business to us,” noted Ballmer, who added, "they turned us down at $33 a share... move on."

Yahoo’s share price has since plunged to a low, low $13.96, and Yahoo Chief Exec Jerry Yang seemed to be almost pleading when he stated at a San Francisco Web 2.0 conference on Wednesday, "I believe the best thing for Microsoft to do is to buy Yahoo". Like a desperate woman trying to get back her man, Yang begged Mighty-Soft to reconsider, noting Yahoo was "open to everything."

But Ballmer made himself perfectly clear, repeating "We are not interested in going back and re-looking at an acquisition. I don't know why they would be either, frankly”.

Well, Yahoo would be interested mainly because its situation is now particularly dire, after a planned advertising partnership with the Google monster came crashing down last week. Together, the two firms would have controlled over 80 per cent of the Interwibble’s search market. Google backed away from the deal, to avoid being challenged by the US Deptartment of Justice, which, unsurprisingly, saw the partnership as a bit of a competition killer.

A GooHoo deal could have brought in a fair bit of spare cash for Yahoo, with some estimates putting the figure at $250 million in revenue growth. It might also have been a useful bone to throw to the now near rabid Yahoo shareholders, still foaming at the mouth over Yang’s decision earlier in the year to reject Microsoft’s $47.5 billion takeover bid.

In an act of sympathy, however, Ballmer noted he wasn’t averse to having some kind of hook-up with Yahoo, despite noting previous attempts to team up around Internet search had also fallen through.

"I'm sure there are still some opportunities for some kind of partnership around search” Ballmer bellowed, adding "Everybody needs a good competitor”.

The Volish CEO also noted it was high time online search saw some innovation, saying "If anybody thinks the future of search is going to look like the present search, that's crazy". Ballmer continued, "The user interface on search hasn't changed for six years. You still get the same dull, boring ten blue links for God's sake. Can't we do any better than that?"

Well, apparently we’re about to find out. µ

L'Inq
See Ballmer’s speech at Znet