Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer embraced Yahoo at $33, but is spurning it at $12. After months of on-again-off-again talks, It doesn’t look like Ballmer is willing to sit down with Yahoo’s Jerry Yang to talk about a full-blown partnership.
“We made an offer, and it was clear that Yahoo
didn’t want to sell the business to us and we moved on,” Steve Ballmer
said today in Sidney…
“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,” Ballmer said.”
Ballmer added on a friendly note “there are still some opportunities
for some kind of partnership around search” as “everybody needs a good
competitor.”
Just the other day, Yang said he’s still interested in speaking to Microsoft and believes the best thing Microsoft could do is to buy Yahoo.
Probably the best thing for innovation is for Yahoo to sell its search business to Microsoft. Yahoo could save $1.4 billion (according to JP Morgan), and if the $1 billion cash infusion (as was made in the previous offer), was still on the table, Yahoo would have the ability to make acquisitions to develop its content and/or improve its display advertising business.
There’s much to be done in those areas.
This time, hopefully Yahoo will act faster to get something done.
