Aplus.net Blog

Yahoo, who has already turned down a number of buy-out offers from Microsoft this year, has reportedly changed its tune after last week’s implosion of the search ad partnership deal it had hoped to make with Google.

However, it may now be too late. Microsoft, apparently, is no longer interested. The U.K.’s Times Online reports that “[Microsoft CEO] Steve Ballmer … has delivered a crushing blow to Yahoo!’s hope of renewing bid talks between the two groups, saying that the world’s largest software company is ‘not interested’.”

“We made an offer, we made another offer and it was clear that Yahoo didn’t want to sell the business to us and we moved on,” The article quotes Ballmer. “We are not interested in going back and re-looking at an acquisition. I don’t know why they would be either, frankly. They turned us down at $33 a share.”

The rebuke stings all the more given a recent statement from Yahoo signaling that it would now be open to an offer from Microsoft. PC Advisor reports that “During a keynote appearance at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco on Wednesday Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang said: ‘To this day I would say that the best thing for Microsoft to do is to buy Yahoo’.”

Industry speculation is that, with the failure of the Google deal, the struggling Yahoo may be running out of lifelines. It’s also likely, however, that Ballmer’s words may be a gambit to signal disinterest and put Yahoo in a position where it may accept a greatly reduced price. Either way, it’s a safe bet that there will be much more development to this story in the days and weeks ahead.