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Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer told attendees at the Web 2.0 Summit that Microsoft was lucky to be locked out of Yahoo buyout in 2008.
Speaking to the crowd about his company’s original $44 billion bid he said “sometimes you’re lucky”
Not wanting to insult Microsoft’s search partner Ballmer added that buying any company just ahead of the 2008 market collapse would have come with pains of their own.
According to Ballmer:
“We would have been closing [the Yahoo deal right after] Lehman Brothers.”
Since their denied buyout Yahoo stock has sharply declines, CEO Carol Bartz was fired and the company is now looking to sell off their assets, possibly to Jack Ma, owner of China’s Alibaba, Inc. which Yahoo owns a large stack in.
Ballmer adds that while his company did not buy Yahoo “there are a lot of great things about Yahoo” and that he’s fully satisfied with his company’s search partnership with the firm.
Microsoft definitely dodged one bullet but they’ve been hit by many others and honestly we don’t know where Yahoo would be today had the company been handed over to Microsoft.
