This Saturday, Microsoft CEO Steven Ballmer officially withdrew his company's bid to buy Yahoo, reports the BBC. Though, according to Ballmer, Microsoft had raised its original offer from $44.6 billion to $47.5 billion, Yahoo continued to demand at least $57 billion. In a letter to Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang, Ballmer also stated that he would not pursue a hostile buyout, as he had previously suggested was his next course of action.
The New York Times explains that Microsoft's bid for Yahoo was an attempt to "buy its way out" of a growing problem for the powerful company: its inability to compete with Google as the Internet replaces the PC as the dominant force in the industry. The Times article suggests that Ballmer will be responsible for finding another way to bring Microsoft into the Internet era. Kara Swisher at All Things Digital blogged about the flurry of speculation as to Ballmer's future at Microsoft. Though the blogosphere was atwitter with suggestions that the Microsoft CEO would soon be given the boot, and possibly replaced by founder and former CEO Bill Gates, Swisher doubts that the rumors have much merit.
Eric Lai at Computerworld reminds readers that, after the failed Yahoo bid, Microsoft is "suddenly awash in tens of billions of unspent dollars that it can now lavish on other Internet firms." He offers three contenders for those unspent billions.
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