Microsoft ‘done’ with Yahoo; Ballmer supports Web investments

Sardar Mohkim Khan | 849 Views

Steve Ballmer must have had scratched his baldness head when Yahoo/Microsoft deal failed, got a new life and then ended with Yahoo’s teaming with Google. And not just that failed team-up with Icahn that got a no from Yahoo in the most direct manner, Ballmer still roars in at defending Microsoft Corps need to flood its wealth into major investments as reported.

Steve Ballmer’s message was pretty straight forward and he made sure he left no doubts when it came to speaking about a deal with Yahoo:

We had a set of principles, we talked about them, and it didn’t work out. Fine, we’re done. We can move on.

Moving on, sounds interesting as we don’t see things to be ending up here with a simple ‘moving on’ (keeping in mind how desperately Microsoft termed Yahoo/Google deal to be harmful for competition). Ballmer mentioned Microsoft’s plans at investing into its online unit with a proposed budget of (additional) $500 million, forging despite further losses. Steve added:

There is this huge, huge, huge new opportunity around the Internet and online and we have to embrace that opportunity and invest in that opportunity..

The present market reports of an 8% fall in Microsoft’s shares. Charles Di Bona, a software research analyst at Stanford C. Bernstein pointed at Ballmer’s comments being insufficient to explain how exactly this investment is planned for spending. He added:

The market’s concern is not about how it is running its core business. It’s about decisions about larger chunks of money that people can’t track.

That’s something one’s bound to hear when you plan at investing such a huge chunk of money and shed no light where? Especially when Microsoft’s online division has continued to sink into losses for eight quarters on the trot. It has lost $1.23 billion in past year, twice of what it had in 2007, but Ballmer has a ball to hit and speaks of it as representing investment for a potential windfall (I would go for ‘fall’ and leave the ‘wind’ here).

All this has come after Microsoft’s announcement at splitting up its core divisions and the departure of Kevin Johnson form Microsoft’s team. Plus it has already chipped up at expanding its deal with Facebook to provide Web search and advertising along with its existing deal to run graphical display ads on Facebook. Perhaps that’s just one deal where a part of $500 million is proposed to go, just a thought.