Ballmer rules out new bid for Yahoo
Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said Friday that Microsoft is "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 on Friday, 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."
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 re-looking 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 a share, move on."
The news came as Yahoo has signaled 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 U.S. government.
"I believe the best thing for Microsoft to do is to buy Yahoo," Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang said at the Web 2.0 conference in San Francisco this week, noting Yahoo remained "open to everything."
At the time of writing, Yahoo's share price was $13.85.
Ballmer's whirlwind visit to Sydney this week has spurred a number of small controversies after the Microsoft executive dismissed Google's Android mobile phone operating system as "financially unsound" and said that Australia needed to get on with the job of building fast broadband networks.
The full video of Ballmer's speech to developers in Sydney on Thursday is also online.
Alex Serpo of ZDNet Australia reported from Sydney.
Jerry Yang: "We were ready to negotiate, we wanted to negotiate a deal, and we felt that we weren't that far apart. But at the end of the day, they withdrew and they since have been very clear about not wanting to buy the company."
(from article http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-10083459-93.html?tag=mncol)
Looks like both need a mediator :)
Gates can only take so much embarrassment, and that's all Ballmer has been.
At least when Microsoft has brutal under Gates they actually achieved the vast amount of their goals.
I personally use MSN Live. I tried to see if it was so much worse than Google, and it wasn't. I do a lot less searching these days as I now mostly use GMail, Google Calendar, and the stock page. The rest is all RSS and Podcasts. I could easily go either way, but I have to admit I like the new Live Services.
Google has the benefit of branding at this point. People say, including me, "Google it" when they mean search it. Like Xerox taking on the meaning of copy. As people say, xerox it rather than "make a copy". Once that happens, it's very hard to undo it. Personally, Microsoft needs to find ways to turn the search brand around. Live Search and Live Tools is a pretty good way to accomplish that task. It might just work. But they have to deliver. If you compare a search because you are on the fence, and you feel that the Google search produced better results, then you will have confirmed a belief and won't take a second look at Live Search for a very long time. So if anything, Microsoft should wait to promote the brand until they are ready for user compare.
Alex Alexzander
Call me crazy, and no doubt you will, I switched from an iPhone 3G to a Windows Mobile phone a few months back. For two reasons mostly. First SalesForce mobile on the iPhone is a buggy work in progress that is only a reader at this point. Meaning you can only see the data. You cannot write data back. It's also absolutely not at all what they showed in the developer meeting. The Motorola Q9, which is a lot like a blackberry, has the full SalesForce mobile app, meaning read and write. The other reason was the keyboard. I just wanted a keyboard back. Much to my surprise the Q9 is a good phone. It has quite a few advantages over the iPhone. All contrary to what I heard, but then in a world of loud Apple fan bois, what did I expect to hear. Anyway, Microsoft has a Live Search app for their mobile platform. And if you tried it you know how good it is. I never hear about it, but none the less it is there. So is Live Mail sync OTA with Windows Mobile. Microsoft has a lot of good software out there. SyncToy, which is free is awesome. Their desktop search in XP was great. It's built into Vista and a lot better than Google Desktop Search. It's so much better I had to admit to myself that I only tried the Google app because hey, it's Google. Brand goes along way in the clout department.
I think Microsoft tries to hire the right people for advertising, but they just never get good ads. Perhaps the ad agency offers good ads and Microsoft rejects them and directs them to do dumb things. I don't know. I do know, personally, how to destroy a brand through marketing. I could do so to Apple or to Google. The public would cry foul if they saw the subtle ads I create, but it would go further than what Microsoft is doing now.
Microsoft could also do a lot better on their own web site. It's a disaster and doesn't leverage all the good things they do by a country mile. It's a joke that most people will use Google or Live Search to find something on Microsoft's page rather than use the built in search on their web page. When that happens, you really have to devote resources to taking a serious look at your customer-facing web site and make changes that make it stupid-simple to find what you want. You have to slowly reinforce that Microsoft is simple, easy, and yet the most powerful.
They have smart people working for them. I remember reading the document which assessed the threat of Linux on Microsoft. And I was surprised at the quality of the assessment. Someone really did their homework and turned out a huge report almost a hundred pages clearly documenting all the competitive advantages and how they affect Microsoft. At that moment I know the problem with Microsoft was not in how the assess a threat. It is in their execution. They clearly understand the problems they face. What they are actually doing about it is where the flaws lay.
Alex
I wrote he is an idiot for turning $47 billion for a company on the way to its death. When are doing nothing but losing marketshare and someone offers you almost double the stock value, you take it. I don't even have to think about. All Yahoo is doing is losing. Their value has little chance of going back up. In fact it has a lot of chance of dropping. So take the money.
Alex
They had their chances and MS was being more than generous.
Maybe if Yahoo is willing to sell at $2/share, then and then only.
You're kidding, right? The news full of Yahoo's many attempts to load the company with so many poison pills that MS would have been crazy to attempt a buy against that kind of resistance.
It's simply too late now; Yang needs to eat the meal he put on his own plate.
Yang needs to some how keep quite whiles still making positive new stories, continue with what ever vision he has for the company, so how I do not think it will disappear anytime soon.
Why Ballmer need to actually keep his mouth shut, and may disappear from the media spot light and let other people do the talking for the company, he is hated by to many people, I think so far the PR guys has done a great job with positive press for both Windows 7, and Azure and Live, why the only negative stories I hear nowadays about Microsoft tend to involve Ballermer talking to the press . And if I was Microsoft I would keep the Microsoft name away from all of their new products, Microsoft is simply uncool and unlike by to many people, whiles google for now is virtually unilaterally love by everyone, even the press and we all know if love the press you tend to achieve your aims. Obarma is prime example of this.
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by PhaseDMA
November 7, 2008 9:41 PM PST
- Yahoo isn't going to go away unless someone buys them. Did everyone forget their the number 2 search engine?
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(16 Comments)They may try to offload everything else, but search will always be there.
If I was Yang I would sell everything that isn't making a steady profit, and keep the rest. The problem with Yahoo isn't that they don't have enough to offer. They have to much and all that gunk is weighing them down. Wait - That isn't even the problem. The real problem is Microsoft said the company isn't worth anything, and despite no truth to that everyone believed them.