• Microsoft makes an unsolicited bid for Yahoo.
• Yahoo stocks make a serious jump.
• Yahoo really thought it over, but decided to go with a search ad deal with Google instead.
• Google dropped Yahoo.
• Yahoo stocks take a serious dive.
• Yahoo dropped CEO Jerry Yang.

Yep, thats it in a nutshell. Despite Yahoos initial rejection and later renewed-then-foundered courtship with Microsoft, rumors have persisted that Microsoft is still interested in purchasing all or part of Yahoo.

Microsoft disagrees. According to MarketWatch (via), at the annual shareholders meeting, CEO Steve Ballmer said:

Let me be as clear as I think Ive tried to be publicly. . . .

We are done with all acquisition discussions with Yahoo. Ive said that a bunch of times. Somehow some people have gotten confused nonetheless.

We did our best. We thought we had something that made sense. It didnt make sense to them. Weve moved on.

But perhaps he doth protest too much"especially when he follows that up with saying that purchasing the search portion of Yahoo is interesting.

The WSJ and Seattle PI (via) also report that Ballmer says hes open to a search collaboration with Yahoo.

What do you think"is a Microsoft-Yahoo search collaboration a good idea? And what would it look like?

Del.icio.us

Digg

Reddit

Furl