...offer to buy out the company, and all the drama that followed, Ballmer is still pining away"and his desire is apparently completely unrequited.

Last November, Ballmer was saying purchasing the search portion of Yahoo would be interesting. This week, hes very interested in getting some kind of deal going in search still, according to CNBC, and without them Microsoft has no search strategy to speak of (ouch!). Or, as we put it last month:

Microsoft just cut 5000 jobs and missed your Wall Street estimates. What are they going to do now? If you guessed theyre going to Disney World, youre wrong. No, according to Steve Ballmer, theyre looking to drop some big bucks on Yahoo search.

No wonder hes still asking for Yahoos hand"or at least that of its search business, saying he wants to somehow get together and find out how to provide more competition to Google, as the NYT reports. Of course, every time he says the word Yahoo, YHOOs heart stock has a fit of palpitations to the tune of a 5% jump.

Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz, however, has been far less stirred, much to the confusion and consternation of Ballmer and analysts alike. As CNBC puts it, the lack of progress is surprising, and Microsoft has been rebuffed and ignored since Bartz came in as chief of Yahoo. It is just stunning to these people that nothing has been done . . . and yet Yahoo continues to circle the wagons, wanting to go it alone.

Surprise, surprise"Yahoo doesnt want to tie itself to a company thats now admitting Apple is stealing its lunch, laying off people left and right . . . oh, wait, I guess thats no better than Yahoos situation anyway.

But I think Jane Austen put the real reason that Ballmer and other analysts are stunned that Carol Bartz might want to keep the company she just took over all in one piece:

It is always incomprehensible to a man that a woman should refuse an offer of marriage.

What do you think"is Carol Bartz waiting for Yahoos price to go up into a reasonable range with all of Ballmers talk, or does she want to hang onto the search business for good?

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