Microsoft Corp. Chief Executive Officer Steve Ballmer has said his company would not make another bid to buyout Internet firm Yahoo, it was reported on Friday.

“We are not interested in going back and re-looking at an acquisition. I don’t know why they would be either, frankly. They turned us down at 33 dollars a share,” Ballmer said at a business luncheon in Sydney, Australia on Friday.

Yahoo Chief Executive Jerry Yang said on Wednesday that Yahoo was ready to return to the bargaining table with Microsoft over another buyout offer by the latter.

“To this day, I believe the best thing for Microsoft to do is to buy Yahoo,” Yang told the Web 2.0 summit in San Francisco.

Yang made the remarks after Internet search giant Google pulled out of an advertising partnership with Yahoo to avoid a “protracted legal battle” with anti-trust regulators.

Yang stressed that he and the rest of Yahoo Inc.’s board “remain open to everything” for a buyout agreement with Microsoft. But Yang said there aren’t any talks between the two sides.

Yahoo rejected two offers from Microsoft, including the 47.5-billion-dollar offer six months ago, a move that irritated Yahoo investors. To pacify the investors, Yahoo had been wooing Google’s alliance to boost its sagging profits and stock.

Microsoft said it withdrew its 33-dollar per share bid after Yang demanded 37 dollars, a price that Yahoo’s stock hasn’t reached since early 2006.

Yahoo was trading at 12.25 dollars shortly after the opening bell on Friday at the New York Stock Exchange, a drop of more than12 percent.

Ballmer’s remarks beat industry analysts prediction that Microsoft would make another offer to buyout Yahoo within the next few months in a bid to better compete with Google.

Despite its dwindling share value, Yahoo remains the No. 2 search engine and still has a huge audience, making it a choice for Microsoft, analysts said.

The journal said Ballmer did suggest that a partnership was possible in the search engine market between Microsoft and Yahoo.

“I’m sure there are still some opportunities for some kind of partnership around search, but I think acquisition is a thing of the past,” Ballmer said.

“Everybody needs a good competitor, and we just want the other guys in this business to have a good competitor that they have to think about every day,” he said.

VietNamNet/Xinhuanet