Jerry Yang reflects on Microhoo deal

>> What happened with the Microsoft deal? Why didn't you take the $33.00 a share Jerry?

>> Jerry: Look, I think everybody's replayed that, ya know, a lot of people have replayed that in their minds, I'm no exception. I think

there is a view that we -- it was there for the taking and I think there's a view that maybe we were trying to do something not to sell

the company.

>> Well, you did adopt a poison filled testing --

>> Jerry: No, that's not what it is, we -- look, I mean the idea of selling Microsoft was something that we've known about, we

discussed, we, to this day I will say that the best thing for Microsoft to do is to buy Yahoo, I don't think that is a bad idea at all.

I think that --

>> Just at $40.00 a share not --

>> Jerry: No, no I think at the right price, whatever the price is we were willing to sell the company and I think the circumstances

in which we were involved in was one that they walked away from a public offer and we were ready to negotiate, we wanted to negotiate

a deal, we felt that we weren't that far apart, but at the end of the day they withdrew and they've since been very clear about not

wanting to buy the company. We, not only myself but I think our board, ya know, one of the things I think people don't really recognize

throughout this is that we have a board, we have a lot of, obviously, stake holders in all this, we have share holders and we believe

we were doing the right thing every step of the way. Now, everybody could look back and say, "Hey, you could have done this differently,

you should have done this differently, you should have taken something." I will tell you there was nothing to take, I would, ya know,

did we want to do a deal with Microsoft to sell the company, yes. Had we been able to do that, I think we'd be very happy but it was

not meant to be. Now, people will blame me, blame the company, you could blame Microsoft I think both sides are to blame for not having done this.

>> Now, there is a very real sense that it was because of you that the deal didn't happen, you fought it, you didn't want it to

happen, you thought the cultures couldn't work together, you didn't want to be purchased by Microsoft, that was an ego issue for you,

was it not, is that not true?

>> Jerry: No, look, I mean people who know me will know me that I don't really have an ego about remaining independent versus not remaining

independent, I think that --

>> That strikes -- that's a surprising statement to me.

>> Jerry: Okay, well, it is true because I think, for me, I think that both as a shareholder but especially a CEO my job is to figure

out how to really find the right path for Yahoo. And so, the debate at Yahoo has always been, or at least certainly through the

Microsoft process, about trying to understand what our alternatives are inaudible an acquisition not because we don't want to do

the acquisition but really to understand how we can get an acquisition done on the right terms. And, look, we can go back through

the time line, we have our version, the world thinks this, ya know, whether they agree with us or not is a different story but at the

end of the day we believe that there was a deal to be done, we believe that we were not that far apart, we obviously believe that they

walked away because they saw something that else they didn't want to do, they were -- and we went back to them, we were very clear,

went back to them and said, "Look, even at the price that you were suggesting are you guys willing to do the deal," and they said no.

So, I don't know what else we could have done, we could have done earlier, we could have done it sooner, we could have done a bunch

of other things but you look at the process it's very hard to argue in saying that I didn't want to do something. And that's something

I know I will be labeled with that forever but --

>> I worked very hard to try to get Steve Balmer to like be here right now, I did, I couldn't get him on the stage.

>> Jerry: Well, I mean, look I have -- and that's the thing I have a lot of respect for Steve and we've had a lot of good conversations

throughout this thing and I don't -- from my perspective it's not personal, I think it's really about whether we could have found

the right thing to do together and, ya know.