Microsoft’s CEO said today that is not interested in renewing its bid for Yahoo.
Steve Ballmer told a business lunch in Sydney that Microsoft Corp. had moved on after Yahoo rejected its takeover bid earlier this year, but did suggest a partnership in the search engine market is possible.
“We made an offer, we made another offer, and it was clear that Yahoo didn’t want to sell the business to us and we moved on,” Ballmer said. “We are not interested in going back and re-looking at an acquisition. I don’t know why they would be either, frankly. They turned us down at $33 a share.”
“I’m sure there are still some opportunities for some kind of partnership around search, but I think acquisition is a thing of the past,” Ballmer said.
“Everybody needs a good competitor, and we just want the other guys in this business to have a good competitor that they have to think about every day,” he said.
He also told the audience that Microsoft saw an opportunity to reinvent the online search process.
“If anybody thinks the future of search is going to look like the present search, that’s crazy,” Ballmer said. “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?””””
Shares of Yahoo last traded at $13.96 and have risen a couple of dollars in the past week based on a hopes that Microsoft would come back with an offer after Google pulled out of its advertising relationship.
Ballmer said, “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?” Clearly, you can’t or you haven’t.
I agree about the boring results…but I think its cutting off your nose to spite your face not buying yahoo…if I could buy the same car now for 5000 that was 12000 a few months ago why wouldn’t I?
@jblack, lmao…reminds me of a bad operating system I have to restart several times per day 😉
The idea of buying Yahoo! in the first place was bad for Microsoft. It’s great for domainers and online advertisers and after the fact, Yahoo. I don’t see a Microhoo merger gaining any ground on Google. You can’t chase a Ferrari by buying a Porsche. That $40 billion is better spent elsewhere.
At this point, if I’m Ballmer, I’d try beating Google to the punch at the next mother of all markets – green energy. Spoils from that industry will be 100x that of internet search.
I think Balmer wants to make Yang look as stupid as possible for turning down their previous offer, not to mention keeping the downward pressure on YHOO.
We have never been impressed with a company that has based its wealth on a cartel type system designed to stifle creativity.
The very fact that they see little value in Yahoo says volumes about their leadership. They obviously dont GET IT !
The more variety a ppc customer has online to advertise their product or services online the better.
What choice would an advertiser have if there would only be google and microsoft?