After Jerry Yang did a 180 and nearly begged Microsoft to buy Yahoo, the rumor mills have been churning with commentary on the decline of Yahoo and speculation about what a potential Microsoft acquisition would involve. Steve Ballmer, while at a business luncheon in Sydney, put an end to all this rampant speculation by saying,
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.
That pretty much seals it. Despite its rock bottom price, Microsoft is still not interested in buying the failing Yahoo. A partnership might be a possibility but that is all Microsoft is willing to dish out. This is more bad news for Yahoo and it looks like it’ll have to find a way to dig out of its somewhat self-created decline alone for the time being. With Google backing out of the advertisement deal and now Microsoft snubbing its nose at Yahoo, this has not been a good week for Jerry Yang and company.
