Three months ago, we looked at the pending Microsoft-Yahoo merger. That one's still very much up in the air and Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer had at one point, gone so far as to threaten a hostile takeover battle. Too bad Yahoo seems to want to pair with anyone except Microsoft. All the while, Google watches from its death star, er, Mountain View headquarters.
In fact, Google's founders said they would happily expand an advertising partnership with Yahoo.
"We were a big partner of Yahoo a few years ago," co-founder Sergey Brin said. "It's great to be working with them again."
Microsoft formally withdrew its bid for Yahoo on May 3 after raising its offer from $31 a share to $33 a share. At the time, Yahoo said it would not consider a price below $37 a share, however Yang said yesterday that he would have been prepared to negotiate over the price of a possible takeover by Microsoft, but never had the chance.
"We did not say it was a take-it-or-leave-it number in the sense that we would never negotiate any more," Yang told the Financial Times. "We were totally willing to do a transaction, and they walked away."
Get your Business odds in the Bodog Sportsbook now!
Bodog Beat
05-09-2008, 02:01 PM
Yahoo! CEO Jerry Yang Fails to Seal Microsoft Deal 
Linear Mode
