When did it hit 9 bucks? Right after Steve Ballmer said explicitly on November 19 at Microsoft's annual shareholder's meeting: "We are done with all acquisition discussions with Yahoo …We did our best. We thought we had something that made sense. It didn't make sense to them. We've moved on."
The power of those words caused Yahoo's stock price to fall to $9 a day after it had jumped to $12 upon news that Yang would step down as CEO.
However, Ballmer did not shut out the lights and slam the door there. His parting words at the shareholders meeting about Yahoo have been hanging in the air ever since: "I think, an interesting possibility is to look at a search collaboration with Yahoo as we had proposed last summer. There's no active discussion on that front but we'd be very open to it."
Microsoft's mere 5 percent share of the search market is sticking in the software giant's craw and Yahoo is breaking down. Once Yahoo's board appoints its new CEO, I think those "active discussions" will begin in earnest. And this time a Yang-less Yahoo won't play hard to get.
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