"Nobody gets it," Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ:MSFT) CEO Steve Ballmer barked at financial analysts Thursday in an attempt to persuade them that Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ:YHOO) came out ahead in the 10-year deal between the two companies.
As far as investors are concerned, Microsoft fares better than Yahoo! in the arrangement. Yahoo!'s stock dropped 12% on Wednesday and nearly 4% on Thursday. Meanwhile, Microsoft's stock has remained steady, and the shares of Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) -- at which the deal is squarely aimed -- are up a bit since it was announced early Wednesday.
"I was myself kind of surprised by the market reaction," Ballmer said at a Thursday meeting with analysts at Microsoft's Bellevue, Wash., headquarters. "It's a win-win deal."
Ballmer went to great lengths to explain how beneficial the deal is for Yahoo!, reports The Wall Street Journal. "For example, Yahoo will receive 88 percent of the revenue that comes from search ads sold on its sites. 'We will not make much,' he said." - Mary Kathleen Flynn
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