By Alex Serpo, 7 November 2008 08:40
NEWS
Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer today said Microsoft was "not interested" in making a new offer for internet company Yahoo!, despite Yahoo!'s share price currently sitting at less than half what Microsoft initially offered.
Speaking at a Committee for Economic Development of Australia lunch in Sydney today, Ballmer said: "Look, we made an offer, we made another offer. It was clear that Yahoo! didn't want to sell the business to us, and we moved on."
Agenda Setters 2008
Find out who made this year's Agenda Setters list of the top technology movers and shakers.
If you disagree with our list then on each of the 50 individual biographies you'll find voting buttons to allow you to rank the personality in question, as well as in depth analysis.
Ballmer said other deals with Yahoo! had also been unsuccessful. "We tried at one point to do a partnership around search, not advertising. That didn't work either, so we moved on, and they moved on."
"We are not interested in going back and relooking at an acquisition," he said. "I don't know why they would be either, frankly."
When discussing the failed takeover, which if successful would have been one of the biggest takeovers in IT history, Ballmer said "they turned us down at 33 dollars a share, move on".
The news came as Yahoo! has signalled over the past couple of days that it was willing to return to the negotiating table with Microsoft, following Google's decision to abandon an advertising partnership with Yahoo! due to a potential legal battle with the US government.
Yahoo CEO, Jerry Yang, said at the Web 2.0 conference in San Francisco this week: "I believe the best thing for Microsoft to do is to buy Yahoo," noting Yahoo! remained "open to everything".
In order to post a comment you need to be registered and logged in.
Log in or create your silicon.com account below