According to The New York Times (with my emphasis):
People close to Yahoo said that the chief executive, Jerry Yang, and his team, who told Microsoft they would not sell for less than $37 a share, greeted Microsoft's decision as a victory. High-fives were exchanged Saturday afternoon when they learned Microsoft was backing down.
Hmm, does that sound like they were really interested in doing a deal?
On the other hand, there were plenty of "virtual high-fives" on the Mini-Microsoft blog, following a post headed Microsoft Walks On By -- Yahoo! Sample comments include:
It's a great day to be a Microsoftie....I've never been so happy that a deal didn't go through....
Happy, happy day! Now I doubt the company will change for the better tomorrow, but at least it isn't going to get worse.
Thank you Steve. We've all put down our pitch forks and torches. They'll be pleny of happy drinking for softies everywhere tonight!!!
None of which disguises the fact that Microsoft has spent five years trying to turn around MSN Search and Live Search and got less than nowhere, and it's a Mini-Microsoft staple that the company is mismanaged (by Ballmer in particular) and overstaffed. As one comment puts it:
SteveB was a dumb ass for making an offer in the first place. Yahoo and Filo have however proven to be even bigger morons by turning MS down. The only thing I now need to make my day even better is a mail from SteveB saying "after many years, Kevin and I have decided we needed to spend more time with our families....."
