14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft's outgoing CEO Steve Ballmer, who'll leave the company as soon as a successor is found, revealed in an interview that he was actually very smart not to buy Yahoo.
While it's easy to see why, given Yahoo's current situation, Ballmer told ZDNet that the market collapsed soon after that, while a potential takeover would have put the company on thin ice over antitrust issues.
“In the annals of history, it will be really smart we didn't buy it, because the market collapsed, of course. It would have really looked silly to have bought it,” he said. “You would say, hmm, who knows what position we would find ourselves in,” Ballmer added, explaining that a potential Yahoo – Google deal would have been blocked by antitrust regulators.
Ballmer, on the other hand, mentioned that his only regret at Microsoft was Windows Vista, the company's most disappointing operating system whose market share has always remained low.