Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has once again said they are done with the talks of a merger. He addressed this question at the annual shareholder meeting today in Bellevue, Washington:

“We are done with all acquisition discussions with Yahoo. I’ve said that a bunch of times. Somehow some people have gotten confused nonetheless,” he said in response to a question. One person in the hall at Bellevue’s Meydenbauer Center then applauded.

Interesting, just last month The American Technology Research had indicated that it was “increasingly likely” Microsoft would make another bid for Yahoo at a “significantly lower” price.” Also at the same time two Bank of America analysts had said this was plausible, but just not in the near future.

We did our best. We thought we had something that made sense. It didn’t make sense to them. We’ve moved on. At the same time, Ballmer said, Microsoft would still be open to a “search collaboration” with Yahoo, like the one Microsoft proposed over the summer, although he said there are no active discussions on that front.

This comes about two-days after Yahoo! CEO Jerry Yang announced he was stepping down. Many had speculated this could re-open the door for discussion as it seemed it was Yang who thought “it didn’t make sense”. Also, the day after that several past and present Microsoft Executives have been suggested as possible successors to Jerry Yang. Wouldn’t a past or present Microsoft Executive in this post make the acquisition

Microsoft and Yahoo’s stocks were already down today, but this news only seemed to add fuel to the fire. Microsoft’s stock plunged 6.78% ($1.33 per share) to a new 52-week low of $18.29 per share. Yahoo’s took a very large drop, sinking over 20% ($2.41 per share) also to a new 52-week low of $9.14 per share.

New Source: The Microsoft Blog