However, he immediately dismissed the idea that "nobody will ever talk to anybody again," as pretty much can happen at a certain point in this "big world."

Steve Ballmer referred to Microsoft’s $42.3 billion acquisition offer as a tactic aimed to grow the company’s search advertising business and not an actual strategy. He said the strategy consists in several other aspects and he quickly enumerated them: "ante up, focus, reinvent the innovation, the investment in semantic expertise." As he sees things, everything should be performed effortlessly.

At the beginning of May, after about three months of seeing its propositions continuously turned down, Microsoft eventually decided to drop everything. Back then, Steve Ballmer was quite at peace with the resolution and appeared to be very confident in the company’s talented team.

Although he did say that Yahoo would have accelerated the strategy the company had put together, he added that Microsoft will pursue its goals just as well without it. Thursday’s statement comes to support the previous announcement.

However, Microsoft’s situation is not all good; its online division has recorded losses of $1.23 billion during the recently ended fiscal year. In 2008, the company has totaled operating expenses of $24.8 billion, three billion more than the previous year. Steve Ballmer considers these incredible sums to be part of an investment plan, and not simple marketing expenses.

Only time will tell whether or not the right decision was taken back in May.