Welcome!

Web 2.0 Authors: Jeremy Geelan, Aditya Banerjee, Kevin Hoffman, Fuat Kircaali, Maureen O'Gara

Related Topics: Open Source, .NET, Search, Open Web

Open Source: Article

Jerry Yang’s Pants Are Down Around His Ankles

Ballmer to Yang: ‘Chuckle. Chuckle. Stew in Your Own Juice, Budd
By Maureen O'Gara
Article Rating:
November 9, 2008 03:00 PM EST
Reads:
 2,977

Jerry Yang’s pants are down around his ankles.

He’s got no Google deal. And he can’t tease Microsoft into taking another run at Yahoo.

After Yang publicly asked Microsoft to take another shot Wednesday, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer returned this volley from Sydney, Australia this morning:

“We made an offer… We made another offer. It was clear that Yahoo didn’t want to sell the business to us and we moved on. We tried at one point to do a partnership around search, not an acquisition. And that didn’t work either, and we moved on… and they moved on… 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.”

He did leave Yang one rabbit hole to scoot down.

“I’m sure,” he said, “there are still opportunities for some kind of partnership around search, but I think acquisition is a thing of the past.”

And as long as he was on a testosterone-charged buzz, he sent a warning to Google as well.

“If anybody thinks the future of search is going to look like the present search, that’s crazy. The user interface on search hasn’t changed in six years. You still get the same dull, boring 10 blue links, for God’s sake. Can’t we do better than that?”

Makes it sound like Microsoft found something creative to do after breaking its horns on Yahoo. Hmm. Maybe Google outsmarted itself by carrying Yahoo’s water. Hmm.

Published November 9, 2008 – Reads 2,977
Copyright © 2008 SYS-CON Media, Inc. — All Rights Reserved.
Syndicated stories and blog feeds, all rights reserved by the author.

More Stories By Maureen O'Gara

Maureen O'Gara the most read technology reporter for the past 20 years, is the Cloud Computing and Virtualization News Desk editor of SYS-CON Media. She is the publisher of famous "Billygrams" and the editor-in-chief of "Client/Server News" for more than a decade. One of the most respected technology reporters in the business, Maureen can be reached by email at maureen(at)sys-con.com or paperboy(at)g2news.com, and by phone at 516 759-7025.

Comments (0)

Share your thoughts on this story.

Add your comment
You must be signed in to add a comment. Sign-in | Register

In accordance with our Comment Policy, we encourage comments that are on topic, relevant and to-the-point. We will remove comments that include profanity, personal attacks, racial slurs, threats of violence, or other inappropriate material that violates our Terms and Conditions, and will block users who make repeated violations. We ask all readers to expect diversity of opinion and to treat one another with dignity and respect.