Ballmer Restates Microsoft’s Yahoo Position

Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer has given the company's position - at least for now - on Yahoo.

At Microsoft’s annual general meeting of stockholders in Bellevue, Wa., company chief executive was asked what was happening in regard to the company’s intent toward Yahoo – the very first question at the meeting.

According to the Seattle Times, he replied:

"Yeah, let me be as clear as I think I’ve tried to be publicly. We are done with all acquisition discussions with Yahoo. I’ve said that a bunch of times. Somehow, some people got confused nonetheless. We did our best. We thought we had something that made sense. If it made sense to them, we’ve moved on. With that said, I’ve also been clear that if they were interested we would still be— I think an interesting possibility to look into search collaboration with Yahoo, as we had proposed last summer, but there’s no active discussion on that front, but we’d be very open to it. But acquisition discussions are finished."

That official stance led to Yahoo shares slipping in price, closing at $9.14, down 21%. Microsoft shares dipped too, closing at $18.29, a 10-year low.