Ballmer on Yahoo Search Deal: “Blah, Blah, Blah”
by Peter Kafka
Posted on February 25, 2009 at 4:52 AM PT
What popped Yahoo’s stock more than six percent yesterday? If you believe the market soothsayers, it was Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer’s desire to get a deal done, expressed at the company’s annual analysts presentation.
Really? Because I listened to the event live, and if there was anything new from Ballmer, I missed it. But don’t take my word for it. Here are Ballmer’s comments, via a transcript provided by Microsoft (MSFT):
You all know that I would like to figure out how to pool somehow Microsoft and Yahoo. I’m not talking about doing an acquisition, blah, blah, blah, back to search deals, blah, blah, blah, I don’t know if anything is going to happen.”
There you go, Yahoo (YHOO) investors–go nuts.
Anyone who doesn’t care about the back-and-forth/will-they-won’t-they between Sunnyvale and Redmond may still find Ballmer’s presentation worthwhile. I was particularly interested in his comments about Microsoft’s continued interest in the TV/entertainment business.
I’ve embedded the slides from the event below; the first part of the presentation was from CFO Chris Liddell. You can listen to audio from the event here.
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