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Microsoft: We May Walk

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer responded to Yahoo's good-but-not-quite-good-enough first quarter results, warning Yahoo's board that the software giant doesn't need the company to succeed in its Web endeavors. "We are offering a lot of money," Ballmer said at a Microsoft conference in Milan.''If Yahoo's shareholders like it, that's great. We are prepared to go forward without a merger with Yahoo.''

Microsoft's offer for Yahoo stands at $31 per share in cash and stock. For more than two months, Yahoo's board has rejected that bid as undervaluing its assets. Microsoft then set this coming Saturday as the deadline for accepting the offer before the company takes its bid directly to shareholders. During the news conference, Ballmer reiterated that Microsoft might decide to lower the bid once the deadline has passed: "Time is money, we've made that clear," he said.

Attempting to make sense of the mess, BoomTown's Kara Swisher cites a clever observation from a friend who likens the Microhoo saga to the quest for the Democratic Presidential nomination between Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama: "We all know how it's going to end but it's going to be nasty nasty nasty all the way till the end, with enough bitterness generated along the way to present (the reasonable) likelihood of a pyrrhic victory." Indeed, because in the end, the real winners are the competitors, i.e. Google and Republican candidate Sen. John McCain.

Read the whole story at Bloomberg News »

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