MICROSOFT has shrugged off Yahoo`s rejection of its takeover bid, saying it is now looking at other ways to spend its $US50 billion ($52 billion) acquisition pot.The software giant was forced to abandon its $US47.5 billion bid for Yahoo when the online search company insisted on a higher price and threatened to hive off the most lucrative part of its business if Microsoft turned hostile.
Since then Microsoft has reopened talks to buy a much smaller part of Yahoo and acquire a modest, passive stake in the internet group.
The two discussing combining their online advertising businesses.
At a conference in Moscow last week, Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer said: "You can buy a whole lot of things for $US50 billion."
It is understood that after Microsoft walked away from the initial talks, it was approached by a number of parties that had been in discussions with Yahoo, and it had approached some others.
Of those, it is believed that Microsoft began talks with Time Warner with a view to buying AOL, the cable company`s internet arm.
Ballmer says: "Yahoo was never the strategy we were pursuing. It was a way to accelerate our online advertising business. We will spend money on some acquisitions."
Microsoft needs to do a deal to compete more effectively with Google, the world`s biggest internet company.
Google holds the lion`s share of the online advertising market, estimated to be worth $US40 billion a year and expected to double by 2010.
Ballmer argued three weeks ago that price was the main reason the company had walked away from Yahoo. "We are interested to pay for Yahoo at some level, and beyond that level we`re not willing to pay for it."
Ballmer offered to raise his valuation of Yahoo from $US31 a share to $US33 a share, but Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang said he would not sell for less than $US37.
The Times
