Any Yahoo acquisition plans Microsoft might have entertained are now dead, says Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer. Microsoft is moving on and looking to invest more in search, a business Ballmer categorizes as a "two-horse race" between Microsoft and Google.Any Yahoo acquisition plans Microsoft might have entertained are now dead,
said Steve Ballmer, Microsoft's CEO.
A Yahoo merger would have helped Microsoft's bid to overtake Google in
search, Ballmer said, but with the $40 billion bill for Yahoo now off the
books, Microsoft is moving on and looking to invest more in search, a business
he categorized as a "two-horse race" between Microsoft and Google.
"Yahoo for us was always a tactic, not a strategy," Ballmer said
during the company's annual financial analyst meeting July 17.
When Microsoft talks about "the need to change our position revenue per
search curve, Yahoo is a tactic to accelerate that," he said. Yahoo and
Microsoft also would have "had R&D and capital expense synergies by coming
together."
At this point, however, "there's nothing under discussion between the
two of us," Ballmer said. "It didn't work out; we're done."
In the future, Microsoft hopes that its place will be in search, he said.
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