Yahoo

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Microsoft’s Yahoo Chase Leaves Ballmer Boring at CES

This is what happens when you focus on corporate intrigue instead of technological improvement. You get boring. Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer spent most of 2008 trying to eat Yahoo in a bid to fight Google. Now he has absolutely nothing interesting to announce at the 2009 Consumer Electronics Show. Even his buddy Bill Gates won’t attend his keynote.

Let the snoozing audience serve as a reminder: Microsoft needs less negotiation, and more innovation. That may be difficult for a non-techie like Ballmer to understand — but he must understand if he’s to satisfy his burning hatred for Google CEO Eric Schmidt. Someone needs to remind Steve-O that he’s in the software business, not the drama business.

Microsoft Buying Yahoo Search? Rubbish.

The Times of London says Microsoft is about to buy Yahoo search, providing a surprising amount of detail on the supposed deal. BoomTown’s Kara Swisher says it’s nonsense.

…a convoluted $20 billion deal that would include well-known Internet execs Jon Miller and Ross Levinsohn, is–in the words of one key player–”total fiction.”

Actually, that’s Levinsohn speaking, on the record. But that’s also the essential word from all key players regarding the Times’ report.

BoomTown has spoken to top sources at Yahoo (YHOO) and Microsoft (MSFT) too and all scoff at such a deal now taking place or that either side has been in any such discussions of late.

Yahoo’s entire market cap, in fact, is only $16 billion.

I’m with Kara on this one. She was the first to break the story of Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang stepping down, so she’s got good sources there. Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has also made very clear his vehement disinterest in Yahoo, much to Yang’s utter humiliation.

That, and common sense dictates you don’t buy part of a $16 billion company for $20 billion. Of course, Ballmer isn’t known for his common sense, but even he must know that sixteen is less than twenty.