Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer says any notion of the software giant acquiring Yahoo is a thing of the past.
Yahoo chief executive Jerry Yang this week said it was in Microsoft's best interests to lodge another bid for the global internet company, after its failed bid earlier this year.
Mr Yang's comments in the US came after a proposed advertising partnership between Yahoo and Google was scrapped to avoid a legal battle with US regulators.
Speaking at a business lunch in Sydney today, Mr Ballmer said Microsoft had moved on after its rejected Yahoo acquisition bid.
"We made an offer, we made another offer, and it was clear that Yahoo didn't want to sell the business to us and we moved on," Mr Ballmer said.
"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 a share."
Yahoo shares last traded at $US13.96 on the New York stock exchange.
However, Mr Ballmer did raise the notion of a Microsoft and Yahoo partnership in the search engine market.
"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."
Mr Ballmer took a swipe at internet search providers, saying Microsoft saw an opportunity to "reinvent the whole darn thing".
"If anybody thinks the future of search is going to look like the present search, that's crazy.
"The user interface on search hasn't changed for six years. You still get the same dull, boring ten blue links for God's sake. Can't we do any better than that?"
The average English language search was 2.2 words because users had worked out that "search engines are so dumb that if you tell them more they actually do a worse job", he 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," Mr Ballmer said.
Meanwhile, the Microsoft boss said optimism could soften the damage of the global slowdown.
"You have got to get out of the sense of pessimism and back into a sense of optimism.
"As long as we are still in the downward spiral, where people don't see the light at the end of the tunnel, we are going to get job cuts and unemployment."
He said Barack Obama's presidential election win could be a catalyst for change.
On the local broadband debate, he simply stated high speed broadband was "very important".
"We need high speed broadband networks," Mr Ballmer said.
The federal government's process of selecting a builder for its national broadband network has repeatedly been delayed, while the potential bidders have been debating the logistics and details of the massive infrastructure project.
The federal government will contribute $4.7 billion to the project, aimed at delivering high-speed internet to 98 per cent of the population.
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