Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang and President Sue Decker were on stage at the D6 conference in Carlsbad this afternoon.
First questions from Walt Mossberg: “Where do you stand with the Microsoft negotiations?”
Yang’s answer: “Microsoft is no longer interested in buying the company. They want to talk about other things, and we’re listening.”
Yang says that Microsoft was very hostile during the negotiations, and that Yahoo was open to doing a deal from day one. “There needed to be the right circumstances” he said, referring to deal price, timing, regulatory issues and other terms. “I didn’t feel like we had a deal even if we could have agreed on price.”
On the rumors about how the deal broke apart: “It’s like when you break up with your girlfriend,” he says, “pretty quickly its he said/she said.”
Mossberg: Why would you want to outsource your search advertising to Google?”
Yang: “We feel very strongly about our ability to monetize search. There’s a value gap between us and the market leader.” He says the test with Google gave them an understanding of how effectively Google could monetize Yahoo’s inventory.
“I like Google” Yang said.
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