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Ballmer: Yahoo Buyout Is Not Gonna Happen

This story was written by Tameka Kee.


Sorry, Jerry, a buyout's not gonna happen. That's the message MSFT CEO Steve Ballmer made clear at a business luncheon in Sydney, Reuters says.

"We made an offer, we made another offer ... We moved on," Ballmer said. "We tried at one point to do a partnership around search ... and that didn't work either, and we moved on and they moved on. We are not interested in going back and re-looking at an acquisition. I don't know why they would be either, frankly."

But he did leave the door open for a potential search deal, something some analysts say Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO) will have to consider if it wants to stay alive despite the demise of its search partnership with Google (NSDQ: GOOG). Ballmer's definitive statement came after Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang suggested that MSFT buy Yahoo during the Web 2.0 conference yesterday.


By Tameka Kee

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