Ballmer Says Microsoft Can Live Without Yahoo

In an interesting turn or events or game of cat and mouse, Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft stated today, “We are offering a lot of money… If Yahoo’s shareholders like it, that’s great. We are prepared to go forward without a merger with Yahoo’’ Interestingly, as paidContent points out, Ballmer uses the term "shareholders" when speaking about interests of Yahoo and hinting at a more hostile bid as Microsoft might take its bid directly to the shareholders. It's interesting how many twists and turns this story has taken since the original unsolicited offer in February on through all the talk of big media partnerships and now we're at the point where Ballmer is legitimately expressing frustration and indicating that Microsoft would in fact be willing to move on without more aggressive action towards Yahoo or whether he's simply trying to incite dissent among Yahoo shareholders to try to bypass Jerry Yang and the Yahoo board. My guess would be that this late, after Microsoft's initial out of the blue bid, it's talks with News Corp and all its efforts to value and and persuade Yahoo that it's only trying to shock Yahoo shareholders into thinking that this deal might in fact fall through.