Microsoft CEO: "Not interested" in Yahoo!

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."

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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".

Original article: Ballmer rules out new Yahoo bid from ZDNet Australia