• Most Popular
  • Most Shared

Pictures

Vincent Padois, head tutor at the Pierre and Marie Curie University who teaches robotics and is babysitting the Paris ICub, makes a demonstration with ICub robot, a ?hybrid embodied cognitive system for a humanoid robot" about 1 metre (3.2 feet) high, at the Pierre and Marie Curie University in Paris September 4, 2009. Six versions of ICub exist in laboratories across Europe, where scientists are painstakingly tweaking its electronic brain to make it capable of learning, just like a human child and hoping it will learn how to adapt its behaviour to changing circumstances, offering new insights into the development of human consciousness. REUTERS/Philippe Wojazer

Pictures of the year: Technology

A look at the year's best science and technology photos.   Slideshow 

    Microsoft CEO pours cold water on Yahoo interest

    Jonathan Standing
    SYDNEY
    Fri Nov 7, 2008 10:24am EST
    Microsoft Chief Executive Officer Steve Ballmer walks past an advertising poster in Zurich, October 4, 2007. REUTERS/Christian Hartmann

    SYDNEY (Reuters) - Microsoft Corp Chief Executive Steve Ballmer dismissed speculation the software giant might still be interested in buying Yahoo Inc, sending shares of the Internet company down 14 percent.

    Technology  |  Deals  |  Media

    "We made an offer, we made another offer ... We moved on," Ballmer told a business luncheon in Sydney on Friday, when asked for the company's plans after a planned Web search advertising partnership between Yahoo and Google Inc fell through this week.

    "We tried at one point to do a partnership around search ... 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," Ballmer said.

    He added that he thought there were still opportunities for some kind of partnership around search.

    Ballmer's comments came two days after Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang told an Internet conference in San Francisco that he believed a deal with Yahoo was still the best option for Microsoft. Both companies lag Google in the Web search market.

    Shares of Yahoo surged earlier this week on speculation that it and Microsoft were in advanced talks, after Google pulled out of the search ad deal with Yahoo. Yahoo officials later said the rumors were untrue.

    Microsoft abandoned an unsolicited $47.5 billion takeover bid for Yahoo in May, after the Internet company had rejected its $33-per-share offer as too low.

    In June, Google and Yahoo announced their planned search ad partnership, which Yahoo had struck as a way of fending off Microsoft.

    The two delayed implementation to allow the U.S. Justice Department to review the deal, but Google this week withdrew from the pact rather than face a protracted legal fight after antitrust regulators had concerns.

    Yahoo shares fell $2.05 to $11.91 in morning trading on the Nasdaq, while Microsoft shares were up 1.92 percent at $21.28.

    (Additional reporting by Tiffany Wu in New York; Editing by Mark Bendeich and John Wallace)
    Technology
    Deals
    Media


    More from Reuters

    Photo

    Plot exposes fissure in U.S. intelligence community

    WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Last week's failed plot to bomb a U.S. passenger jet has exposed lingering fissures within the U.S. intelligence community, which had information from interviews and clandestine intercepts but did not put the pieces together, officials said.

    » More Top News
    Floor traders work at the Hong Kong Stocks Exchange, January 16, 2008. REUTERS/Bobby Yip

    My way or the highway?

    Hong Kong is poised to accept Beijing's accounting standards. That's good. The system, though, is prone to scandal. That's bad.  Full Article 

    Global Markets
    People walk past a branch of Bank of America in New York's financial district April 28, 2009. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid
    Rolfe Winkler:

    Move your money

    Boycotting "too big to fail" banks is a great idea -- so long as investors remember that banks aren't the only ones responsible for the crisis.  Full Article 

      Commentary